"Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world."

"When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see."

"Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?"

"These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after."

"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."

"No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious."

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

"An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable."

"Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first."

"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

"Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation."

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."

"She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."

"An index is a great leveller."

"A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes."

"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them."

"General consultant to mankind."

"I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."

"Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt."

"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."

"The worst sin... is... to be indifferent."

"The only song I can sing is 'Lady in Red' so that must tell you how great it must have been."

"You always have to challenge yourself or else you get soft. Right?"

"I have a kind of boring personal life, to the paparazzi anyway, and I don't hang with the cool crowd."