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

In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age.

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.

Santa Barbara people are conservative-not like in L.A., where everybody wears rhinestones on their glasses to show that they own an airplane factory.

As for consulting a dentist regularly, my punctuality practically amounted to a fetish. Every twelve years I would drop whatever I was doing and allow wild Caucasian ponies to drag me to a reputable orthodontist.

He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.

If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.