His father was an ass and he is an ass. I imagine sooner than I should like I shall be playing uncle to a litter of asses.

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

Lilac’s moving, stirring as I shift away from her, and she rolls over with a little protesting noise, reaching sleepily after me. Then she begins to register the raindrops as they connect with her skin,...

This is a lot more satisfying,” he said, “when I have intelligent life whom I can render awed, rapt with attention for my clever verbosity.”The ugly lizard-crab-thing on the next rock over clicked its claw,...

You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.

What good is it if they miss your face but not your mind?

Paparazzi arrived for Hugh [Grant]. We had to stand under a tree and smile for them.Photographer: ‘Hugh, could you look less — um –‘Hugh: ‘Pained?

It was Colonel Parkman who upped stakes, crossed the border, and named our town, thus perversely commemorating a battle in which he’d lost. (Though perhaps that’s not so unusual: many people take a curatorial interest...

How do you feel about going on a date with me? I’m abroad for another two weeks; you’ve got plenty of time to prepare yourself. It will be the best night of your life, of...

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? We’re at the end of World War Two in history, and I can’t wait to find out...

Well, I can throw a mean comeback, so there’s that. I will crush them on wit.

Art is art. You can take it or leave it. Liking it or not liking it does not make you a better person, and who you like or dislike results in the same thing.

Money, Gun and Lie can solve almost all the problems.

The important thing to remember is not to forget

I can’t believe you just did that! Are you crazy?”I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Why do people keep asking me that?”He turned to stare at me, his eyes worried. “Who else keeps asking you...

Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren’t we suffocating ourselves a wee bit?’ he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. ‘A...

She drank in all their compliments and soon she was full of herself.

You’re one of the lucky ones.

Our talents are living things, we give birth to them, nourish them till they grow and become immortal.

Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently

True, beneath the human façade, I was an interloper, an alien whose ship had crashed beyond hope of repair in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia—but at least I’d learned to walk and talk enough like...

I’m living so far beyond my means that we may almost be said to be living apart.

Life is meaning less when you realized that you are about to die. Till then, everything negative however trifle they may be, depress you.

Patience, grasshopper,” said Maia. “Good things come to those who wait.””I always thought that was ‘Good things come to those who do the wave,'” said Simon. “No wonder I’ve been so confused all my life.

Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence.

Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king’s will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king will...

He wouldn’t even understand dry wit if you dropped him off in the desert with a canteen full of sand and a Sandberg poem.

The poet is a faker / Who’s so good at his act / He even fakes the pain / Of pain he feels in fact.

One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone.

I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At...

Analysis is soul of thought and ghost of wit.

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out...

Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.

Does the king know you’re back?””Nope! I’m trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence.””That sounds… hard.””Yeah, the storming...

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

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer

Your fantasies define you, so dream carefully. A man with no imagination is a man with no future in today’s world—and no past in tomorrow’s.

What is whiter than snow?’ he said. ‘The truth,’ said Grania.’What is the best colour?’ said Finn. ‘The colour of childhood,’ said she.’What is hotter than fire?’ ‘The face of a hospitable man when he...

I am back in London in a couple of days and looking forward to Sunday. Here is what we are doing. 1. Going to see my favourite mad transgender folk singer at the Roundhouse. 2....

Three,’ reckoned the captain, ‘ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?’Most likely Trelawney’s own men,” said the doctor; ‘those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.’Nay,’ replied the...

Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones.

Big words from a guy who’s trussed up like a turkey. What are you going to do, wobble over here like an upside- down turtle to snap me in half?””The logistics of breaking you are...

Foolish minds will entertain you, but confuse minds will irritate you.

Actually, she wasn’t a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel.

Wit beyond measure is a man’s greatest treasure.

To be knowledgeable, learn new things every day; to be wise, unlearn things that you learn with wit and love.

I’m very fond of experimental housekeeping.

I’m very lucky to have such a loving son.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare,...