S. J. Perelman Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

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

S. J. Perelman
For years I have let dentists ride roughshod over my teeth; I have been sawed, hacked, chopped, whittled, bewitched, bewildered, tattooed, and signed on again; but this is cuspid's last stand.

S. J. Perelman
Philadelphia, a metropolis sometimes known as the City of Brotherly Love, but more accurately as the City of Bleak Afternoons.

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

S. J. Perelman
As invariably happens after one passes 40, the paper sagged open to the obituary page.

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

S. J. Perelman
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.

S. J. Perelman
If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.

S. J. Perelman
I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

S. J. Perelman
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.

S. J. Perelman
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.

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

S. J. Perelman
Nature, it appears, has been rather more bountiful to Paul's body and purse than to his intellect; above the ears, speaking bluntly, the boy is strictly tapioca.

S. J. Perelman
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.

S. J. Perelman
As for consulting a dentist regularly, my punctuality practically amounted to a fetish. Every twelve years I would drop whatever I was doing and allow wild Caucasian ponies to drag me to a reputable orthodontist.

S. J. Perelman
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.

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

S. J. Perelman
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.

S. J. Perelman
I had always thought of dentists as of the phlegmatic type — square-jawed sadists in white aprons who found release in trying out new kinds of burs on my shaky little incisors.

S. J. Perelman
We old roosters must be cautious. Don't try to outwit your arteries.

S. J. Perelman
One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique..., the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 F and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble.

S. J. Perelman
I regard my comic writing as serious.

S. J. Perelman
The effort of writing seems more arduous all the time. Unlike technicians who are supposed to become more proficient with practice, I find I've grown considerably less articulate.

S. J. Perelman
I always grieve for the poor souls who have to grind out a daily humorous column or a weekly piece.

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

S. J. Perelman
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".

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

S. J. Perelman
Five months after I joined the enterprise, it was stricken with bankruptcy, the medical name for mercantile atrophy.

S. J. Perelman
You'll have to leave my meals on a tray outside the door because I'll be working pretty late on the secret of making myself invisible, which may take me almost until eleven o'clock.

S. J. Perelman
Philomène was a dainty thing, built somewhat on the order of Lois De Fee, the lady bouncer. She had the rippling muscles of a panther, the stolidity of a water buffalo, and the lazy insolence of a shoe salesman.

S. J. Perelman