"Remember to say no; it's the most difficult word".
-- Bette Davis to Robin Williams quoted in today's Liz Smith column.

"Certain things should just stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone."
- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"Boy, when you are dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody."
- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"I figured that I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversation with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . . I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd getmarried. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else"
-- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"Only in New York does pizza reach your house before an ambulance . . . are banks' doors open, while counter-top pens are bolted . . . do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and diet soda . . . must invalids walk to the back of a drugstore for prescriptions, while unsick folk get cigarettes up front . . . do we screen calls with answering machines but have call waiting, so we don't miss hearing from someone we wouldn't talk to in the first place."
--Sy Presten

'I don't see people who are nasty or read nasty things. This makes me more tranquil"
-- Brooke Astor on her 100th Birthday tomorrow.

"I know many of my husband's ex-girlfriends who will agree that if every man was was as good in bed as David, there would be a lot of happy women in the world,"
-- Liza Minnelli

"If Liza was expecting passion with David on their wedding night, believe me, she's still waiting."
-- Ruth Warrick , as quoted in The Globe.

"We moved in together one week after we met, that says it all."
-- Liza Minnelli

"I know who I am. That's the important thing. She knows who she is, and we're so in love we've got our own world."
-- David Gest

"Ruth Warrick is trying to capitalize on the attention of our wedding"... "It is unfortunate that an 86-year-old woman, like Ruth Warrick, can think that a friendship is more than just that. Ruth Warrick is old enough to be David's grandmother."
-- Liza Minnelli, as told to Page Six.

"It's all a big mistake. I never should have said it"... "I feel very badly about it. I guess I was a little giddy. I feel terrible to rain on their parade."
--Ruth Warrick, as told to Page Six.

"I hate stupid damn Earth."... "You are getting bald, Mr. Tawd."... "Yeah , well Mister Tawd IS getting old."... "This place has Anthrax!... YOU have Anthrax!"... "I love Mister Tawd, he's the best teacher in the whole wide world."... "Hello Miss Dawg... blah blah blah blah."
--Aaron, age six

"There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."
-- Quentin Crisp

"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last chapter missing."
-- Quentin Crisp

"Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn't?"
--Quentin Crisp

"She’s using him? He’s using her? Who cares? Nobody deserves to do it all alone.”
-- Margaret O'Brien (at the fourth wedding of Liza Minnelli, as quoted by Rex Reed)

"My father is always telling me to take care of myself and get a lot of rest. He's always saying, "Sleep will fix anything. Go take a nap." I think he's right. I find when I get frazzled, if I get a good night's sleep, I feel much better about things."
-- Ben Stiller

"It costs nothing to be kind."
-- Sylvia Myer

It was "the kissiest wedding I've ever seen."
-- Liz Smith (on the wedding of Liza Minelli to David Gest, yesterday).

"People call and ask me, 'Carolyn, is Satan there?' And I tell them, 'Satan is only where we let him.'"
-- Carolyn Risher, Mayor of Inglis, Fla., (who issued a decree banning Satan from town).

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The race against time can only be won by slowing down."
-- Fortune Cookie

"It's always something..."
-- Rosanna Rosana Danna (as played by Gilda Radner)

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.
-- Denis Leary

"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life."
-- Pablo Picasso

"In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed".
-- Sid Caesar

"Life is very interesting if you make mistakes."
-- Georges Carpentier

"Things to Do Today: See List of Things to Do Yesterday"
-- Pat Fowler, post-it note in her kitchen

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow.
-- Milton Berle

"The key to managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided."
-- Casey Stengel

"A career is a job that has gone on too long."
-- Jeff Macnelly

"It's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

"Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity."
-- Philip Butler

"Life is one long process of getting tired."
-- Samuel Butler

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.
-- Danny Kaye

"Isn't this an unusual conversation for men who aren't crazy?"
-- Larry Contratti quoting Renfield (played by Dwight Frye) in Dracula, Universal Studios, 1931

"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else."
-- Winston Churchill

"Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down."
-- Wilson Mizner

"Always do right. It will gratify some and astonish the rest."
-- Mark Twain

"Life is just a bowl of pork chops."
-- Don Cummings quoting from the ad campaign of the National Pork Board, Des Moines

'I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead."
-- Samuel Goldwyn

"The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions."
-- Alfred Adler

"All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it."
-- Samuel Butler

"It's easier to ride the horse in the direction it's going"
-- Werner Erhard

"My dear sir, the bigger the humbug, the better the people will like it."
-- Phineas T. Barnum

"I laugh to keep from weeping..."
-- Nicolas Coppola

"Attack life, it's going to kill you anyway."
-- Steven Coallier

"Order is for idiots, genius can handle chaos."
-- Unknown

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
-- Joe Ancis

"The day begins the night before..."
-- Shari Lewis