Quotes
When I sent this book to my mother for her comments and corrections, she wrote back to say, "In some parts your ego is showing, bu mostly it's fine." Forty years after I left home for the last time, she still has my number.
An honor it was, too, as he told me, “You know that because you don’t get paid anything for it.”
p. 37
“My specialty is napping.”
“A noble pursuit,” he said.
p. 178
When all the good ideas have been expended, I quoted to myself, one might as well try a bad one.
p. 222
The combined effect of so many ambulatory sticks and balls, each of whom wore an expression of complete self-satisfaction, added strength to my longstanding belief that the profession of couturier required only a good knowledge of fabric and a malicious sense of humor.
p. 9
“Isn’t it obvious?” he answered.
“No. It is so far from obvious that it has gone right through obscure, breezed past unfathomable and is now completely beyond the reach of my vocabulary.”
p. 54
“I have a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“A daring and bold one,” he said.
“Is that wise?”
“It has to be that kind of plan. It’s that kind of cosmos.”
p. 197
“We are all used, all users. With luck, the final tally approximates a balance in our favor. But I think you are one of those who calls the proverbial glass half empty, while I prefer to call it half full.”
“No,” said Filidor, “in truth, I have never given these matters much thought. I am one who quaffs the glass empty and calls for it to be refilled.”
p. 276
The direct approach is not always the wisest strategy, as those who have fallen off mountains can testify.
p. 302
“What is your theory?” my assistant asked, but again I declined to answer. A mistaken theory that never went farther than its originator’s mind does not count as an error.
p. 48
It takes a determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself.
The level of dumb you humans can achieve is quite mind-boggling.
p. 49
