"Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell."

"Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!"

"Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse."

"When you have to apologize, it is well, I suppose, to get the thing over quickly ..."

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea, And love is a thing that can never go wrong, and I am Marie of Romania."

"The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!"

"Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt."

"The definition of eternity is two people and a ham."

"[Hospitalized and pressing the nurse's button before dictating letters to her secretary:] This should assure us of at least forty-five minutes of undisturbed privacy."

"Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction."

"On lady novelists: As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter."

"It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes."

"By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, Infinite, undying. Lady make note of this -- One of you is lying."

"I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid."

"I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it."

"But I don't give up; I forget why not."

"I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money."

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice."

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

"I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours."

"Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying."

"It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate."

"Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat."

"Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation."

"If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised."

"Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness."

"Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday, Go take your damned tomorrow!"

"You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do."

"Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty."

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both."

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."

"If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?"

"Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme."

"If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you."

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"I hate writing, I love having written."

"A hangover is the wrath of grapes."

"I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem."

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician."

"Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave."

"The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be."

"Never throw mud: you can miss the target, but your hands will remain dirty."

"I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host."

"If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them ..."

"The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue."

"[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself."

"There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it."

"My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him."