If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between on man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.

We're human beings we are - all of us - and that's what people are liable to forget. Human beings don't like peace and goodwill and everybody loving everybody else. However much they may think they do, they don't really because they're not made like that. Human beings love eating and drinking and loving and hating. They also like showing off, grabbing all they can, fighting for their rights and bossing anybody who'll give them half a chance.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

Man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals