That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.

good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handle with gloves.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice.

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.

He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive.