Robert Charles Benchley Quotes

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

Robert Charles Benchley

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.

Robert Charles Benchley

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

Robert Charles Benchley

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

Robert Charles Benchley

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

Robert Charles Benchley

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.

Robert Charles Benchley

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.

Robert Charles Benchley

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Charles Benchley

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.

Robert Charles Benchley

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

Robert Charles Benchley

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

Robert Charles Benchley

I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.

Robert Charles Benchley

Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.

Robert Charles Benchley

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

Robert Charles Benchley

The only cure for a real hangover is death.

Robert Charles Benchley