Quotes from Ben Schott

I read the papers online, and something usually piques my curiosity - that will then be the baseline of my research for the day.

I always wanted to be a photographer. While I was at school, I got a lab-monkey holiday job in the darkrooms at the 'Independent.' What they taught me there was: you need to get the whole story in one frame.

I follow blogs, particularly all the main political ones - Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Coffee House, Paul Waugh, Iain Martin in the Wall Street Journal, and so on. And some American ones, like the Huffington Post, Gawker, Boing Boing; or Eater and Daily Candy, also American, which are about where to go to eat.

I have the luxury of getting up quite late, so I hardly ever set an alarm clock.

The web can be a fast trip to the library, giving you immediate access to a government report, or it can filter media for you, which is why I look at around 15- 20 of these sites every day.

Writing 'Schottenfreude' has reinforced the fact that there are few, if any, emotions that have not been experienced, and analyzed, by some of the world's greatest writers.

I'm very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I'm a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was - everyone knew each other.

Properly cared for, a Savile Row suit can be handed down the generations—like gout.

I'm a firm believer in thinking inside the box. The first thing I do when approaching a new project is to give myself rigid guidelines and precise limits. That's how I begin to think. If I were told that I could create anything in any medium, using any amount of space and any amount of time, I'd stand in a field and scream.

Such diplomacy is not to be sneezed at, for the suit is a window to the soul: lightweight cotton when cash is tight, Italian cashmere when an inheritance lands; waistlines drawn in during illness or anxiety, and let out at times of excess. Weddings, funerals, christenings, and court appearances—all of life's landmarks are sanctified, quietly and confidentially, by one's tailor.

There are, of course, three ways to hide behind a sofa.

That's the problem with educating girls' said Spode, bitterly, 'they never stop resorting to fact.

It's love, Bertie, but love unrequited. Although she is the apple of my eye, to her I am no more than a pip. I need

the pre-lunch diary is unblemished by obligation

First things first, Mr. Wooster: how did our postman costume suit your friend?' 'Almost too well. People insisted on handling him parcels, and he was bitten by more than one dog.

When it comes to clothing, gentlemen's personal gentlemen have a comprehensive vocabulary of euphemisms. 'Bold' translates as 'ostentatious', 'lively' as 'clown-like', and 'striking' as 'obscene'.

only a fool attempts honesty with a man in love. In my experience, the blunter one is enumerating the deficiencies of an affianced, the more likely that marriage becomes - placing you on the wrong side of a wronged wife until divorce do them part.

Don't these spiritual johnnies swear some kind of hypocritic oath?!

The only acceptable way to stand out, as far as valets and dog shows are concerned, is to combine sartorial purity ('true to pedigree') with fastidious uniformity ('best in breed').

persons who claim mystical powers often enjoy remarkably ambidextrous moralities when presented with opportunities for enrichment.

Aunts, I have learned, never admit defeat. In the face of overwhelming forces, or incontestable facts, they simply change tack. Had Napoleon been an aunt, he would never have done anything so vulgar as to 'retreat' from Moscow. Rather, he would have framed his return to Paris casually as a question of clothing and etiquette, noting it was unseasonably cold for October and declaring that–like fish and family–armies of invasion go off after three days.

Aunt logic is an immovable object; aunts themselves an unstoppable force.

Sleep no more!' I cried. 'Montgomery doth murder sleep.

Madeline Bassett is the Charybdis to Florence Craye's Scylla. Just as deadly to the seafaring community, but offering a subtly different form of death by drowning. Whereas Florence dashes you on the rocks of her intellectual disapproval, Madeline engulfs you in a sentimental whirlpool of froth.