S. J. Perelman Quotes
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Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.
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I cannot recall a more engaging passage in fiction, and I've been trying for almost eighteen seconds.
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FREEDLEY: Will I feel better after I take it? DR. FITCH (coldly): I, am a physician, Freedley, not an astrologer. If you want a horoscope, there's a gypsy tearoom over on Lexington Avenue.
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Where would the Rockefellers be today if old John D. had gone on selling short-weight kerosene ... to widows and orphans instead of wisely deciding to mulct the whole country.
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I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music, and cantatas.
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I used to pride myself on being impervious to the sentimentalities of soap opera, but when that loveliest of actresses, Rachel Gurney, of Upstairs, Downstairs, perished on the Titanic, I wept so convulsively and developed such anorexia that I had to be force-fed.
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Do you know anything at all that nobody else knows or, for that matter, gives a damn about? If you do, then sit tight, because one of these days you're going to Hollywood as a technical supervisor on a million dollar movie.
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There are nineteen words in Yiddish that convey gradations of disparagement, from a mild, fluttery helplessness to a state of downright, irreconcilable brutishness. All of them can be usefully employed to pinpoint the kind of individuals I write about.
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All right, so call me Miss Cliche of 1960, but the thing about the married ones that always spooks me is how sweet and attentive they are at first, when they're on the prowl.
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In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age.
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This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's.
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If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.
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A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn't know enough to stay in the city.
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I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage, and similar chlorophyll. Any dietitian will tell you that a running foot of apple strudel contains four times the vitamins of a bushel of beans.