Christmas dinner was something of a success; it passed off, at any rate, without bloodshed.

A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunds of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.

I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.

His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

The real trouble with liars ... was that there could never be any guarantee against their occasionally telling the truth.

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

More always means worse.

A sudden douche of terror then squirted itself all over Dixon. After a moment he realized that this was because he had a plan and was about to carry it out. He panted a little with the enormity of it, then drained his glass and said quaveringly: Here goes then. Good-bye for now.

Outside every fat man there is an even fatter man trying to close in.

It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.

The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.

A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.

Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.

It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.

Sex stops when you pull up your pants,

Love never lets you go.