The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.

I don't grasp things this early in the day. I mean, I hear voices, all right, but I can't pick out the verbs.

Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if some manufacturer would make a toy as tough, as staunch, as hard to crack open as the carton it comes in!

Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review, it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write "I had a fun time"? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing.

I will read anything rather than work.

To me having a party is something like having a baby. The fact that you got through the last one alive is not somehow sufficiently reassuring now.

While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theater people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil.