In England especially, I've found that if you bring up King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at a dinner party or a social gathering, it's like throwing a Molotov cocktail into the room.

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 always like to think I'm having a dinner party, and I'm the host, and the audience are my guests.

The cocktail party is a device for paying off obligations to people you don't want to invite for dinner.

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.