S. J. Perelman Quotes

Quotes about:

• I don't know where we're going or how we'll get there, but when we get there we'll be there - and that's something, even if it's nothing.

  S. J. Perelman

  Knows, Ifs

  16 Copy quote

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

  S. J. Perelman

  Love, Anniversary, Valentines Day

  63 Copy quote

• The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

  S. J. Perelman

  Writing, Editing, Editors

  41 Copy quote

• I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.

  S. J. Perelman

  Funny, Beautiful, Girl

  1944 Crazy Like a Fox,'Captain Future, BlockThat Kick'.

  31 Copy quote

• There is such a thing as too much couth.

  S. J. Perelman

  Civilization, Too Much, Gentility

  1971 In the Observer, 24 Sep.

  26 Copy quote

• The main obligation is to amuse yourself.

  S. J. Perelman

  Obligation

  "I Seem to be a Verb". Book by Buckminster Fuller, p. 62, 1970.

  32 Copy quote

• I loathe writing. On the other hand I'm a great believer in money.

  S. J. Perelman

  Writing, Hands, Believer

  16 Copy quote

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

  S. J. Perelman

  Music, Symphony, Quartets

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. J. Perelman

  Kindness, Too Much, Found

  1971 In the Observer, 24 Sep.

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. J. Perelman

  Evening, Feels, Written

  23 Copy quote

• Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.

  S. J. Perelman

  Fate, Deck, Bottom

  "The Rising Gorge". Book by S. J. Perelman, p. 183, 1961.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. J. Perelman

  Running, Food, Apples

  24 Copy quote

• I cannot recall a more engaging passage in fiction, and I've been trying for almost eighteen seconds.

  S. J. Perelman

  Funny, Humor, Criticism

  13 Copy quote

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

  S. J. Perelman

  Personality, Facts

  8 Copy quote

• Where would the Rockefellers be today if old John D. had gone on selling short-weight kerosene ... to widows and orphans instead of wisely deciding to mulct the whole country.

  S. J. Perelman

  Country, Widows And Orphans, Entrepreneur

  19 Copy quote

• "In France," Marcel said with wintry dignity, "accidents occur in the bedroom, not the kitchen."

  S. J. Perelman

  Funny, Kitchen, France

  11 Copy quote

• We old roosters must be cautious. Don't try to outwit your arteries.

  S. J. Perelman

  Funny, Humorous, Age

  4 Copy quote

• I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

  S. J. Perelman

  Food, Cooking, Teeth

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. J. Perelman

  Writing, Nineteen, Kind

  14 Copy quote

• To err is human, to forgive supine.

  S. J. Perelman

  Forgiveness, Forgiving, Humans

  11 Copy quote

• If travel has taught me nothing more, and it certainly has, it's this: you never know when some trifling incident, utterly without significance, may pitchfork you into adventure or, by the same token, may not.

  S. J. Perelman

  Travel, Adventure, May

  13 Copy quote

• As for consulting a dentist regularly, my punctuality practically amounted to a fetish. Every twelve years I would drop whatever I was doing and allow wild Caucasian ponies to drag me to a reputable orthodontist.

  S. J. Perelman

  Years, Twelve, Ponies

  5 Copy quote

• The worst disgrace that can befall a producer is an unkind notice from a New York reviewer. When this happens, the producer becomes a pariah in Hollywood. He is shunned by his friends, thrown into bankruptcy, and like a Japanese electing hara-kiri, he commits suttee.

  S. J. Perelman

  New York, Hollywood, Pariahs

  "Strictly from Hunger". "The Most of S. J. Perelman", p. 47, 1992.

  16 Copy quote

• Do you know anything at all that nobody else knows or, for that matter, gives a damn about? If you do, then sit tight, because one of these days you're going to Hollywood as a technical supervisor on a million dollar movie.

  S. J. Perelman

  Funny, California, Giving

  14 Copy quote

• A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade.

  S. J. Perelman

  Pale Yellow, Oil, House

  8 Copy quote

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