The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.

A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.

Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.

Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.

Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.