"The coffee having arrived we guzzled genteelly for a while..."

“It will be a sad day for the world when the Oriental gent realizes that Western bumbling is only Eastern guile in a different idiom. Well, a lot of it, anyway.”

“Goodness," I babbled, "but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day.”

“I don't much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p.m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling.”

“Sleep slunk up like a black panther and sank its kindly fangs into what remained of the Mortdecai brain.”

“A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says "You can't win.”

“I have this heavy addiction to life and I'm told that the withdrawal symptoms are shocking.”