36 S. J. Perelman Quotes

S. J. Perelman quotes

1. I have Bright's disease and he has mine.

2. 'Great-grandfather died under strange circumstances. He opened a vein in his bath.' 'I never knew baths had veins,' protested Gabrilowitsch.' 'I never knew his great-grandfather had a ba-' began Falcovsky derisively.

3. 'Oh, son, I wish you hadn't become a scenario writer!' she sniffled. 'Aw, now, Moms,' I comforted her, 'it's no worse than playing the piano in a call house.'

4. 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. A great bonfire is made of the film, and the luckless producer, followed by directors, actors, technicians, and the producer's wives, immolate themselves. Only the scenario writers are exempt. These are tied between the tails of two spirited Caucasian ponies, which are then driven off in opposite directions. This custom is called 'a conference'.

5. 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.

6. In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel.

7. Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Javanese or the Piltdown man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence. His nose, broken in childhood by a self-inflicted blow with a hockey stick, has a prehensile tip, ever quick to smell out an insult; at the least suspicion of an affront, Perelman, who has the pride of a Spanish grandee, has been known to whip out his sword-cane and hide in the nearest closet.

8. Before they made S J Perelman they broke the mold.

9. [The waiters'] eyes sparkled and their pencils flew as she proceeded to eviscerate my wallet - pate, Whitstable oysters, a sole, and a favorite salad of the Nizam of Hyderabad made of shredded five-pound notes.

10. Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.

11. Button-cute, rapier-keen, wafer-thin and pauper-poor is S.J. Perelman, whose tall, stooping figure is better known to the twilit half-world of five continents than to Publishers' Row. That he possesses the power to become invisible to finance companies; that his laboratory is tooled up to manufacture Frankenstein-type monsters on an incredible scale; and that he owns one of the rare mouths in which butter has never melted are legends treasured by every schoolboy.

12. From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

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

2. There is something about a home aquarium which sets my teeth on edge the moment I see it. Why anyone would want to live with a small container of stagnant water populated by a half-dead guppy is beyond me.

3. FREEDLEY: Will I feel better after I take it? DR. FITCH (coldly): I, am a physician, Freedley, not an astrologer. If you want a horoscope, there's a gypsy tearoom over on Lexington Avenue.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.

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

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

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

10. 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.

11. Only the scenario writers are exempt. These are tied between the tails of two spirited Caucasian ponies, which are then driven off in opposite directions. This custom is called a conference.

12. To err is human, to forgive supine.

13. All right, so call me Miss Cliche of 1960, but the thing about the married ones that always spooks me is how sweet and attentive they are at first, when they're on the prowl.

14. I used to pride myself on being impervious to the sentimentalities of soap opera, but when that loveliest of actresses, Rachel Gurney, of Upstairs, Downstairs, perished on the Titanic, I wept so convulsively and developed such anorexia that I had to be force-fed.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age.

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

19. There is such a thing as too much couth.

20. I found the pearl of the Orient slightly less exciting than a rainy Sunday evening in Rochester.

21. He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.

22. 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.

23. I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.

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