A lot of meetings are held to arrange when to have meetings. ... Meetings today are usually called conferences to make them sound more significant.

The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.

The memo's chief function ... is as a track-coverer, so that you can turn on someone six months later and snarl: 'Well, you should have known about it, I sent you a memo.

I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969.

There is something infinitely dingy about the word workshop. Pray that England doesn't become a nation of workshopkeepers.

I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple: drink in different pubs to your other half.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.