A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.

I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.