From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.

What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?

Back horses or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier. But to bet at golf is pure gambling.

It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?