Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

Every once in a while I get the highly inappropriate proposal which is like, ‚Wow, Really! You don’t even know me and I don’t know you at all, and you want that to happen? Tonight? Ok, I get off work at 7.30.‘

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it’s just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

Don’t be getting sloppy drunk and telling them dirty jokes.

Stand-up is hard.

It’s a funny old world.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Libraries raised me.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

If you look at me close enough, there’s a small resemblance to a chicken nugget. I don’t know if it’s my skin texture or my hair, but the resemblance is definitely there.

Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

When I was with Andy Warhol, I thought, ‚God, his wig looks cheaper than mine!‘

No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

We’re a phenomenally snobby society, and it’s such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

She’s been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

My mother insisted that her children read.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

I don’t read books much.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.