S. J. Perelman Short Quotes

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I regard my comic writing as serious.

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

S. J. Perelman
A dreary industrial town controlled by hoodlums of enormous wealth.

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

S. J. Perelman
Look at me. Worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

S. J. Perelman
Groucho Marx: With a little study you'll go a long way, and I wish you'd start now.

S. J. Perelman
I'm highly irritable and my senses bruise easily, and when they are bruised, I write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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 want to register a complaint…You know who sneaked into my stateroom at three o'clock this morning?…Nobody, and that's my complaint.

S. J. Perelman
A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn't know enough to stay in the city.

S. J. Perelman
There is no danger of my getting scurvy [while in England], as I have to consume at least two gin-and-limes every evening to keep the cold out.

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
English life, while very pleasant, is rather bland. I expected kindness and gentility and I found it, but there is such a thing as too much couth.

S. J. Perelman
There is nothing like a good, painstaking survey full of decimal points and guarded generalizations to put a glaze like a Sung vase on your eyeball.

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

S. J. Perelman