Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all.

Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.

I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one.

It has long been my boast that I can read or eat anything. But unfortunately, although I eat like a Hoover, I read so slowly that I am always on the smart book three years after everyone else has finished.

In our society mothers take the place elsewhere occupied by the Fates, the System, Negroes, Communism or Reactionary Imperialist Plots; mothers go on getting blamed until they're eighty, but shouldn't take it personally.

It's a pity more men are not bastards by birth instead of vocation.

It might be marvelous to be a man - then I could stop worrying about what's fair to women and just cheerfully assume I was superior, and that they had all been born to iron my shirts. Better still, I could be an Irish man - then I would have all the privileges of being male without giving up the right to be wayward, temperamental and an appealing minority.