A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.

Gifts allow us to demonstrate exactly how little we know about a person. And nothing pisses a person off more than being shoved into the wrong pigeonhole.

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

The notion of picking one time of year to be decent to other people is obscene because it's actually validating the notion of being miserable wretches the rest of the year.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

You get married at twenty, you're going to be shocked who you're living with at thirty.

It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.