Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different-- in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.

The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody.

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.