I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.

It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.

It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.

one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty−one that everything afterward savors of anti−climax.

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.

I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.