Of all forms of fiction autobiography is the most gratuitous.
Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
Evelyn Waugh 1903–66 English novelist
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.
Harriette Wilson 1789–1846 English courtesan, opening words of her Memoirs
Awards and Honours 
You should always accept because of the pain it brings to your enemies.
Maurice Bowra 1898–1971 English scholar and literary critic
My career must be slipping. This is the first time I’ve been available to pick up an award.
Michael Caine 1933– English film actor
Oscar night at my house is called Passover.
Bob Hope 1903–2003 American comedian
on the Order of the Garter:
A very useful institution. It fosters a wholesome taste for bright colours, and gives old men who have good legs an excuse for showing them.
Lord Salisbury 1830–1903 British Conservative statesman
congratulated on being awarded a baronetcy:
Thanks—but more importantly than that, I have just been elected a member of Sunningdale Golf Club.
Denis Thatcher 1915–2003 English businessman
I had another convulsion of pleasure when Yale made me a Doctor of Literature, because I was not competent to doctor anybody’s literature but my own.
Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer
Medals, they’re like haemorrhoids. Sooner or later every asshole gets one.
Billy Wilder 1906–2002 American screenwriter and director
Baseball
see also SPORTS
Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?
Yogi Berra 1925–2015 American baseball player
If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s going to stop ’em.
Yogi Berra 1925–2015 American baseball player
Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It’s the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.
Dick Gregory 1932–2017 American comedian and civil rights activist
Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.
Leroy (‘Satchel’) Paige 1906–82 American baseball player, a baseball pitcher’s advice
I don’t think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion.
Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist, a cricket enthusiast on baseball
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
George F. Will 1941– American columnist
Beauty
It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa and it runs out fast.
Julie Burchill 1960– English journalist and writer
Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They’re the temporary happy by-products of time and/or DNA.
Carrie Fisher 1956–2017 American actress and writer
I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.
W. S. Gilbert 1836–1911 English writer
I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?
Jean Kerr 1923–2003 American writer
A beautiful young lady is an act of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art.
Louis Nizer 1902–94 British-born American lawyer
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
Saki 1870–1916 Scottish writer
If beauty is truth, why don’t women go to the library to have their hair done?
Lily Tomlin 1939– American comedienne and actress
Betting and Gambling
Rowe’s Rule: the odds are five to six that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Paul Dickson 1939– American writer
Never give a sucker an even break.
W. C. Fields 1880–1946 American humorist
Horse sense is a good judgement which keeps horses from betting on people.
W. C. Fields 1880–1946 American humorist
asked how his bridge-partner should have played a hand:
Under an assumed name.
George S. Kaufman 1889–1961 American dramatist
I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.
Damon Runyon 1884–1946 American writer
It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.
Damon Runyon 1884–1946 American writer
The Bible
An apology for the Deviclass="underline" It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler 1835–1902 English novelist
The number one book of the ages was written by a committee, and it was called the Bible.
Louis B. Mayer 1885–1957 Russian-born American film executive
The Ten Commandments should be treated like an examination. Only six need to be attempted.
Bertrand Russell 1872–1970 British philosopher and mathematician
LORD ILLINGWORTH: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
MRS ALLONBY: It ends with Revelations.
Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet
I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes well out of it.
Virginia Woolf 1882–1941 English novelist
Biography
see also AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Biography, like big game hunting, is one of the recognized forms of sport, and it is as unfair as only sport can be.
Philip Guedalla 1889–1944 British historian and biographer
Biography is the mesh through which our real life escapes.
Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist
Discretion is not the better part of biography.
Lytton Strachey 1880–1932 English biographer
Then there is my noble and biographical friend who has added a new terror to death.
Charles Wetherell 1770–1846 English lawyer and politician, on Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors being written without the consent of heirs or executors
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet
Birds
see ANIMALS and Birds
Birth and Pregnancy
If men had to have babies, they would only ever have one each.
Diana, Princess of Wales 1961–97 British princess, while in late pregnancy
Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.
Elizabeth Gilbert 1969– American writer
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.