In the old days, ptomaine poisoning was a cover-all. If you missed a show and you were young, it meant you were having an abortion. If you were old, it meant you were having a face lift.

I feel that much of the world's sorrow comes from people who are this, yet allow themselves to be treated as that.

Get up early in the morning before everybody has breathed up all the good air.

Sometimes what you want you don't get until you don't want it anymore.

At seventy-four I'm getting minor raves on my looks, but I'm caught in the middle. Who knows what seventy-four looks like? Who cares? But if I'd listened to my friends, I could now lie and say I'm eighty-four. For eighty-four, the way I look is spectacular.

Nothing dates one so dreadfully as to think someplace is uptown. At our age one must be watchful of these conversational gray hairs.

A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life.