#wi

Papa, I'm ashamed that you think women are so simple. We can make decisions for ourselves too, you know. I'm not a child or a baby anymore, so I'm allowed to speak my mind. And if you don't wish to hear it, just tell me so and I'll go into another room-but I'll speak it anyway. I want this for myself as much as I've never wanted the diplomatic corps and I'm going to get it-even if I have to do it alone. Excuse me. ↗

— Steve Kluger

#my-most-excellent-year #witty #women #witty

I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now. ↗

— Tobias Wolff

#witty

Make sure it is God's trumpet you are blowing- if it is only yours it won't wake the dead, it will simply disturb the neighbours. ↗

— W. Ian Thomas

#eye-opener #reminder #sharp #witty #witty

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#witty

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fun #pressure #wit #witty

The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#wise #witty #witty

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism. ↗

— Christopher Moore

#wit #witty #witty

Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#teasing #witty

I'd watch your mouth", he said, tilting his head as he looked at my ID."The last lunker who laughed at her picture spent the night in the emergency room with a drink umbrella jammed up his nose". ↗

— Kim Harrison

#witch #witches

He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#lion #witches