"A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated."

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“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall. … The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”

“The work of Robert Benchley is as funny as it was 80 years ago." by S. T. Karnick, in National Review”

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

“The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.”

“There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.”

“The Robert Benchley Society”

Resonant Thoughts

"My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name. I grew up su…"

— Isabel Wilkerson

Journalism1961

#friendship

"Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help m…"

— Meher Baba

Philosophy1894–1969

#Human Nature

"It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born."

— Patrick Rothfuss

Literature1973

#books

"The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes p…"

— W. Somerset Maugham

Literature1874–1965

#art