Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.

When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.

Western man is schizophrenic.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

Living in an age of advertisement we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day but it changes and withers at a touch.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

I wouldn't like to see a chick of mine taking her clothes off and kissing a fellow on screen. And my girls must get very hurt when they see me doing it.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Nothing to do but work, Nothing to eat but food, Nothing to wear out but clothes, To keep one from going nude.

Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest.

I have a friend in New York who's a stylist and I went over to her place because she's got a lot of clothes. I basically ended up wearing most of it. So it's all stuff that I brought over.

I try not to be but I'm super-neurotic about diet. I'm neurotic about trying not to be neurotic! I'm like every other girl. I have to try really hard my whole life to try to be fit. And I'm super-vain. And I want to wear cute clothes.

I'm a former hippie, so clothes are important to me - your clothes defined you in that period. I guess clothes still defines people. But, I change a lot. I'm in my Brooks Brothers period now.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!"

If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same.

There's this idea that if you take your clothes off, somehow you must have loose morals.

I have fun with my clothes onstage; it's not a concert you're seeing, it's a fashion show.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

I once did a role which I couldn't rehearse in my street clothes, I had to have the character's costume on before I could rehearse it. I just couldn't think as the character unless I looked like him, or I knew that I looked like him.

It's so much harder to keep your clothes on than take them off in this business. Even in Exotica, they wanted more nudity, but I didn't feel comfortable.

I have never been a believer that nice clothes should only be for people with money.