There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

It's written into the Constitution that you're allowed to pursue happiness. In England it would be considered a frivolous objective.

Nowadays people don't use face powder; they say it dries the skin. But I makeup in the old-fashioned way.

I learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me

Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.