P. G. Wodehouse

A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. (From preface)

Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.

When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.

Dedication: To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

Anybody can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.

"What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as you can just what it's all about."

--"You hit a ball with a stick until it falls into a hole."

It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love.

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.