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b2e0d74
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From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
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writing
humor
pg-wodehouse
mission
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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f62a8bc
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Jeeves, you really are a specific dream-rabbit." "Thank you, miss. I am glad to have given satisfaction."
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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74a24f1
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I expect I shall feel better after tea.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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7c9cbe6
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The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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f35b226
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Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows here not. 'Ah!' he said. '?', cried the eyebrows. '? ? ?' Ashe ignored the eyebrows. ... Mr Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all, but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr Beach did not fill. He was hanged if he was going to let himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating himself.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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24ee8e2
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It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.
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remorse
principles
regret
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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68a94af
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It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.
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writing
novels
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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b3ad8dd
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What a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.
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wodehouse
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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155f13e
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What I'm worrying about is what Tom is going to say when he starts talking.
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uncle-tom
wooster
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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c1e02e4
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The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.
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money
humor
economics
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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271f31e
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No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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240f190
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It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
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humor
fearsomeness
fury
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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7d98d38
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Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like." Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have preferred to me!"
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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d1e6c70
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Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes; but one does not fall in love. A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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328966d
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He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle.
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life
melancholy
misfortune
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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9f51708
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This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.
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literature
reading
intelligence
brain-power
mental-power
simplemindedness
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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ba2bef9
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I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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dd7e2e0
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When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.
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jealousy
marriage
humor
engagement
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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6aa9e6b
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He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consomme, and the dinner-gong due any moment.
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unhappiness
humor
forgetfulness
poison
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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20e2e90
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There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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2999c08
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What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very different things.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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a014912
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A girl who bonnets a policeman with an ashcan full of bottles is obviously good wife-and-mother timber.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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c000a8b
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Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
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marriage
humor
trophy-wives
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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3795911
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there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute."
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insightful
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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c9ca14d
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This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. . . . Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. . . . Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must..
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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e0a431d
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It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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5631627
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You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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d5ceb34
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He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.
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dancing
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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61b78a4
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As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practica..
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wodehouse
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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e18b1c8
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The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgement by the party of the second part's glamour. Put it like this: the male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female das..
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love
trouble
misfortune
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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ef867bc
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Sober or blotto, this is your motto: keep muddling through.
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humour
wodehouse
motto
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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25b461f
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It was a silver cow. But when I say 'cow', don't go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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c076a91
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And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.
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hilarious
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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4c1634d
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As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.
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shakespeare
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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b67317c
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I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.
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humour
writing
wooster
jeeves-and-wooster
jeeves
wodehouse
writing-craft
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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9d93887
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Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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1a27e43
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As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got an..
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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0971a51
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The thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was, frankly appalled me.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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9b7102a
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A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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7cf973c
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I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves, I said, but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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989fe46
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In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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a12a130
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Jeeves, I'm engaged." "I hope you will be very happy, sir." "Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett."
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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1953488
|
How does he look, Jeeves?" "Sir?" "What does Mr Bassington-Bassington look like?" "It is hardly my place, sir, to criticize the facial peculiarities of your friends."
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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c132b7a
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The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through? I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining..
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writing
plot
creative-process
storytelling
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P.G. Wodehouse |