The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.

New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.

Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them.

Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.