Too much brilliance has its disadvantages, and misplaced wit may raise a laugh, but often beheads a topic of profound interest.

[On spiritualism:] I always knew the living talked rot, but it's nothing to the rot the dead talk.

All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.

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.

Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious.

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.