What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.

What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

I did feel as though a number of critics had appointed themselves, when they sat down with a new book of mine, to rectify what they felt to be was my inflated reputation and so that the book in hand was not really given a chance but made a kind of weapon in the general attempt to bring me down to size.

There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.

I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.