“Don't feel badly when I die. I've been dead for a long time.”

A bleak late-life reflection on isolation and the feeling of having outlived one's own era · Conversation with a friend, later recollected

• Death
• Despair
• Time

“The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.”

Completing her darkly comic warning about the difficulties of a writing life · Book review, Esquire, 1959

• Art
• Death
• Joy

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.”

Beginning her famously severe but affectionate advice to aspiring writers · Book review, Esquire, 1959

• Art
• Friendship

“I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.”

Recognising the limits of humour when confronting suffering and political violence · Essay on the Spanish Civil War

• Art
• Truth
• War

“What fresh hell can this be?”

Her reported response to an unwelcome ringing doorbell, later closely associated with her public persona · Conversation, recalled in John Keats biography

• Despair
• Joy

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

A compact Shakespearean parody displaying the wordplay that made her reputation · Fashion caption, Vogue

• Art
• Joy

“Salary is no object; I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.”

Reversing a familiar phrase to joke about the precarious economics of writing · Book review, The New Yorker, 1928

• Art
• Joy

“I know of no character in the literature of the last quarter-century who is such a complete pain in the neck.”

Applying literary criticism with gleeful directness to Emily Post's idealised social figure · Book review of Emily Post's Etiquette, The New Yorker, 1927

• Art
• Truth

“The most a lady may do is give him the wrong telephone number.”

Mocking rigid social etiquette by suggesting a more practical form of self-defence · Book review of Emily Post's Etiquette, The New Yorker, 1927

• Joy
• Truth

“Her present style has also the simple straightness of a pretzel. A caressing pain in the neck is what her work gives me.”

Condensing literary criticism into a vivid joke about unnecessarily tortuous prose · Book review, The New Yorker, 1928

• Art
• Truth

“It was a toss-up, as I staggered toward the conclusion, as to whether it would be him or me.”

Describing an exhausting novel through exaggerated competition with its dying character · Book review, The New Yorker, 1928

• Art
• Death

“Souls get lost so easily. I used to be forever leaving mine in taxicabs.”

Turning fashionable talk of spirituality into an image of comic absent-mindedness · Book review, The New Yorker, 1928

• Faith
• Joy

“I think things are going to get better.”

A notably simple expression of optimism from a writer famous for pessimistic wit · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Hope
• Time

“No. No. And it was a curse on me, it was simply awful the things that were attributed to me.”

Rejecting the many invented wisecracks that accumulated around her reputation · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Fame
• Truth

“New talents have got to come along because they always have.”

Expressing faith in the continual renewal of creative talent · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Hope
• Time

“I think if I didn't have hope I'd just as soon be dead.”

Expressing hope as something essential rather than merely comforting · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Death
• Hope

“You got to take that chance and then get some other job.”

Arguing that artists must risk professional consequences rather than surrender conviction · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Hope
• Truth

“You can't put down literally everything that everybody says; you'll be bored stiff, as I am with him.”

Arguing that realistic dialogue still requires selection, judgement and craft · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Truth

“It's murder to work for them, at least so I think, because everybody writes. There are too many people writing. Everybody in the studio writes.”

Complaining about the loss of individual authorship in the Hollywood studio system · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art

“Would you mind if I leave the room when you speak that word?”

Her joking response when Terkel introduced the subject of Hollywood · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Joy

“I think it's very healthy to crave laughter, don't you?”

Seeing the desire for comedy as a sign of emotional health rather than frivolity · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Hope
• Joy

“I feel there always has been and always will be.”

Affirming the permanent need for satire in society · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Truth

“I think he's great. I think lastingly great.”

Offering an unequivocal judgement on the enduring achievement of Ring Lardner · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Fame

“I think it does teach you a great deal about words and about the rhythm that must be in prose too.”

Explaining how writing verse sharpened her sense of language and prose rhythm · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

• Art
• Poetry