Quotes from S. J. Perelman

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.

I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music, and cantatas.

Nature, it appears, has been rather more bountiful to Paul's body and purse than to his intellect; above the ears, speaking bluntly, the boy is strictly tapioca.

I found the pearl of the Orient slightly less exciting than a rainy Sunday evening in Rochester.

He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.

English life, while very pleasant, is rather bland. I expected kindness and gentility and I found it, but there is such a thing as too much couth.

Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

There are nineteen words in Yiddish that convey gradations of disparagement from a mild, fluttery helplessness to a state of downright, irreconcilable brutishness. All of them can be usefully employed to pinpoint the kind of individuals I write about.

Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.

He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.

I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage, and similar chlorophyll. Any dietitian will tell you that a running foot of apple strudel contains four times the vitamins of a bushel of beans.

Outside of a spring lamb trotting into a slaughterhouse, there is nothing in the animal kingdom as innocent and foredoomed as the new purchaser of a country place. The moment he scratches his signature on the deed, it is open season and no limit to the bag.

Oh, why can't we break away from all this, just you and I, and lodge with my fleas in the hills? I mean, flee to my lodge in the hills.

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin .. it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring.

The waiters' eyes sparkled and their pencils flew as she proceeded to eviscerate my wallet – paté, Whitstable oysters, a sole, and a favorite salad of the Nizam of Hyderabad made of shredded five-pound notes.

I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.

This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's.

Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.

FREEDLEY: Will I feel better after I take it? DR. FITCH (coldly): I, am a physician, Freedley, not an astrologer. If you want a horoscope, there's a gypsy tearoom over on Lexington Avenue.

There is such a thing as too much couth.

The main obligation is to amuse yourself.

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.