Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

There is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that everyone else is having a more enjoyable time than we are ourselves;

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.

I'd like to play a horse, many people think I already have. Either end of the horse would be fine.

Bartending took the romanticism out of drinking.