Quotes from P.G. Wodehouse

with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, What are my big scenes? and then get every drop of juice out of them. (Interview, The Paris Review , Issue 64, Winter 1975)

Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

It is never difficult to distinguish between with a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.

Conversationally, I am like a clockwork toy. I have to be set going.

There's a sort of wooly headed duckiness about you. If I wasn't so crazy about Marmaduke, I could really marry you Bertie.

It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.

Filled with a coward rage that dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, Lord Emsworth coughed a cough that was undisguisedly a bronchial white flag.

One of the advantages a sister has when arguing with a brother is that she is under no obligation to be tactful. If she wishes to tell him that he is an idiot and ought to have his head examined, she can do so and, going further, can add that it is a thousand pities that no-one ever thought of smothering him with a pillow in his formative years.

Jeeves, Mr Little is in love with that female. So I gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage. I clutched my brow. Slapping him? Yes, sir. Roguishly.

There's no doubt about it, being a policeman warps a man's mind and ruins that sunny faith in his fellow human beings which is the foundation of a lovable character. There seems to be no way of avoiding this.

Love, Miss Halliday, is a delicate plant. It needs tending, nurturing, assiduous fostering. This cannot be done by throwing the breakfast bacon at a husband's head.

The proprietor of the grocery store on the corner was bidding a silent farewell to a tomato which even he, though a dauntless optimist, had been compelled to recognize as having outlived its utility.

She was at the valiant age when we burn to right wrongs and succour the oppressed

If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.

To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling.

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope... Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves. No, sir. There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't. Very true, sir.

The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise.

Bream Mortimer was tall and thin. He had small bright eyes and a sharply curving nose. He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do. It gave strangers a momentary shock of surprise when they saw Bream Mortimer in restaurants, eating roast beef. They had the feeling that he would have preferred sunflower seeds.

The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles.

I say, you don't know how I could raise fifty quid somehow, do you? Why don't you work? Work? said young Bingo, surprised. What, me? No, I shall have to think of some way.