What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.

Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that and those that don't need to be told.

There are some people that you cannot change, you must either swallow them whole or leave them alone.

[To Jean Harlow, who repeatedly mispronounced her first name:] No, no, Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow.