I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.

It was a pity she couldn't do justice to the meal, which featured Scottish salmon, steaming roast joints, venison haunch accompanied by sausages and sweetbreads, and elaborate vegetable casseroles dressed with cream and butter and truffles. For dessert there were platters of luxury fruits; raspberries, nectarines, cherries, peaches and pineapples, as well as a surfeit of cakes, tarts, and syllabubs.

I don't walk into a dinner party and say, 'You're an idiot; give me my coat.'

The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.