Quotes from Elaine Dundy

He looked so—what was it that gave him his irresistible charm? He looked so accessible. That was it. A great simple truth struck me with surprise: charm is availability.

You're not playing the game," he said grimly. "English gossip isn't supposed to get back to the person it's about.

I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it.

Bollie was a sort of chain-talker, lighting one end of a conversation to another without letting the first go out.

When passing a certain field near the railroad tracks John Allen Cooke, a black former truck driver, often points to it saying: "This is where I used to see Elvis laying around. Killing time. He was real quiet. Thinking about his music, I guess...

Why? Oh, Holy Cow!" I groaned. "Please not to use these ridiculous expressions," he exploded in exasperation. "I have never heard any other Americans use them except those—what do you call them—those cartoon animals. Mickey Mouse." "Micky Mice," I said firmly.

Silk--that's what I want rubbing against me. I feel so woolen all the time.

Spring was ravishing around town, bursting and budding and blooming. It was one of those nights when the air is blood-temperature and it's impossible to tell where you leave off and it begins.

Now called for something drastically un-running away. Now called for--what? Suddenly I had it. Now called for being a librarian! (--Sally Jay Gorce)

Tell her next time to look where she's going.

These waiters were hand-picked for pleurisy, deafness, and a variety of speech defects. They were flushed of skin, gnarled of hand. The dishes that jumped on to the floor from their palsied hands were never referred to again, as it were, but just lay there for the rest of the evening to be ground under foot by passers-by.

For someone who likes to get around as much as I do, I really travel quite badly. Planes frighten me, boats bore me, trains make me dirty, cars make me car-sick. And practically nothing can equal the critical dismay with which I first greet the sight of new places.

To accuse the American male of not bathing in Paris is merely to flatter him.

She stared at the goldfish bowl uncertainly. "I can never remember whether I've fed him or not," she said suddenly. "I kept on feeding them and they kept on dying all the time. All but one. So I don't know if he killed the rest or if I was over-feeding them or starving them or what. You're supposed to give them a pinch of food every day. But how big is a pinch anyway?

All at once I found myself standing there gazing down that enchanted boulevard in the blue, blue evening. Everything seemed to fall into place. Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it.

I have never known anyone with less money and less visible means of getting hold of it. He had slept around everywhere, from the floors of friends' studios, to the Metro. There were days when he had literally no money at all, and after a string of such days he would go to the blood bank and sell his blood. More often than not he spent this money on tickets to the ballet.

I looked at those patient huddlers on the [Embassy] benches who had hardly moved, and a horrible irony hit me: they wanted so badly to get into the States; I wanted so badly to stay out.

If his wife doesn't want him, I certainly don't, was my way of putting it.

the fabric of his shirt was woven of some Martian stuff; even his very skin was of another weave.

I felt experienced without feeling that I, personally, had been through anything.

Now.' He said, 'I have to ask you three question. How old are you? Are you in love? And what in God's name are you doing here?

Fate was playing my hand for me and for once in my life I knew better than not to go ahead and let it.

I had a sinister premonition of how embarrassing an homme fatal could be when his charms are no longer fatal to you.

I went to the window and looked out at the September evening. Though still hot with the vanished sun, the dusk, with its suggestion of autumn and nights drawing in, sent shivers of excitement up and down my spine. I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it. I felt a vague, melancholy sensation running through me, not at all unpleasant.