S. J. Perelman

Writer

1904-02-01

Quotes by S. J. Perelman

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

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

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• I'm half Scotch-Irish on both sides, and when I lose my temper-brother, I go.

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• Thanks to our free-enterprise system and phenomenal advances in marketing, we now stand on the threshold of an era when the American palate, stimulated by delicacies formerly reserved only for a Maecenas, will one day hold aloft a gustatory torch for the entire world.

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• I withheld a riposte that would have seared him if I had been able to think of it, and followed him into the office.

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• Santa Barbara people are conservative-not like in L.A., where everybody wears rhinestones on their glasses to show that they own an airplane factory.

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• The problem of what to wear gave me pause; ordinarily, I prefer black tie for these sentimental occasions, as a cummerbund flattens the belly, but lacking at for the moment-the cummerbund, not the belly-I compromised on a vest, and flicked a bath towel over my shoes.

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• A procession of sinuous long-stemmed beauties wound its way to the footlights attired in peasant costumes, large sections of which evidently had been lost in shipment from France.

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• The hands of the clock pointed to one-thirty the other day and my own, more flaccid than vermicelli, dangled inertly beside the dental chair as Dr. Yankwich shoved aside his drill, fired alternate round of compressed air and raspberry shrub down my throat, and straightened up. There-wasn't it a breeze? he asked gaily.

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• Curious race, the English. Once they warm up, there's no telling what they'll do for you.

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• As one who achieved the symmetry of a Humphrey Bogart and the grace of a jaguar purely on pastry, I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage and similar chlorophyll.

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• As I walked purposefully down Kilindini Road, past the rows of Indian shops full of brummagem- the ivory knickknacks, fly whisks, and musical chamber pots that called up nostalgic memoirs of Sixth Avenue-my nerves tingled with exultation.

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• Though not constitutionally averse to the crackle of greenbacks, I learned many years ago-twenty-eight, in fact-that of all the roads to insolvency open to my profession, entanglement in a revue is the shortest.

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• Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.

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• By the time I reach the hotel, my frustration is such that I compensate with a Gargantuan tea of watercress sandwiches, rock buns, and pastry that utterly ruin my digestion. It makes for a stimulating afternoon.

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• The meal, of course, was ghastly-fried plaice smothered in cream sauce, the usual Brussels sprouts boiled beyond cognizance, and a soggy plum tart as fibrous as corrugated paper.

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• The only solution is to plow everything under and live on pie.

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• Call me uxorious, spoony, passion's plaything, but let a woman signify her whim by so much as a nod and, by George, I'll climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest ocean to gratify it.

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• The Milky Way, the hotel where I was scheduled to stay in Las Vegas and whose floor show Fauntleroy was currently headlining, was the town's newest-a vast, foolish beehive of plate glass rearing fifteen stories above the sagebrush, so ruthlessly air-condi-tioned that I was wheezing like an accordion by the time I unpacked.

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• In the same instant, as I straightened up, giddy with the effort of extricating a mullein from the cucumbers, I realized that the spiny coiffure was in actuality a home permanent and the bulging expanse of gingham below it the rest of Mrs. Kozlich, our current cleaning woman.

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