I'm half Scotch-Irish on both sides, and when I lose my temper-brother, I go.

A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade.

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring.

I used to pride myself on being impervious to the sentimentalities of soap opera, but when that loveliest of actresses, Rachel Gurney, of Upstairs, Downstairs, perished on the Titanic, I wept so convulsively and developed such anorexia that I had to be force-fed.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

The main obligation is to amuse yourself.

There is such a thing as too much couth.