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.

I used to think the only use for sport was to give small boys something else to kick besides me.

American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep.

I am all for people having their heart in the right place; but the right place for a heart is not inside the head.

In hell they will bore you, in heaven you will bore them.

One reason you are stricken when your parents die is that the audience you've been aiming at all your life - shocking it, pleasing it - has suddenly left the theater.

People get a bad impression of it [the English climate] by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don't try to predict what.