The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

He might have just been in a play that closed in Philadelphia. He might have been with a law firm.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.

If Death stepped miraculously through the glass and came in after you, in all probability you just got up and went along with him, ferociously but quietly.

She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

He needed a haircut-especially at the nape of the neck-the worst way, as only a small boy with an almost full-grown head and a reedlike neck can need one.

My moustache, however sparse, was all mine; it hadn't been put on with spirit gum. I felt it reassuringly with my fingers as I hurried back to school.

"My first name is Esme. I don't think I shall tell you my full name, for the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles. Americans are, you know."

Very probably, it was not part of the sofa vaudeville of a showoff but, rather, the private, exposed achievement of a young man who, at one time or another, might have tried shaving himself left-handed.