Quotes from Robert Charles Benchley

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

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.

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

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.

There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.

A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is 'Don't you wish you knew'

The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.