25 quotes
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.
The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958)
The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now."
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.
The only cure for a real hangover is death.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
With Truth as Our Sword (2005)
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
In America there are two classes of travel — first class, and with children.
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn’t money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one’s hands.
There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
The Algonquin Wits (1968)
There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.
Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing.
Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
The Algonquin Wits (1968)
I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.
My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.
Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley (1955)