Humorous Quotes from
Please Don't Eat The Daisies
By Jean Kerr

I was only eight years old, and clearly retarded for my age, when my goal in life dawned on me. I won't say there was a blinding flash, just a poignance, a suspension of time, a sweet recognition of the moment of truth not unlike that memorable instant in which Johnny Weissmuller first noticed that he was Tarzan and not Jane.

The only story I can remember now (that I wrote in High School) was called “The Pursuit of Happiness” and I wince to report that Happiness was the heroine’s name.

I decided to write plays, spurred on by a chance compliment my father had paid me years earlier. “Look,” he exploded one evening over the dinner table, “the only damn thing in this world you're good for is talk.” By talk I assumed he meant dialogue – and I was off.

I won't say that my early efforts were crowned with glory. Oh, I’d say it, all right, but could I make it stick?

When my first play was produced in New York, Louis Kronenberger wrote in Time, with a felicity it took me only ten years to appreciate, that “Leo G. Carroll brightens up Mrs. Kerr’s play in much the same way that flowers brighten a sickroom.”

In many ways, a drama critic leads an ideal existence, or would if he didn't have to see so many plays.

We are being very careful with our children. They’ll never have to pay a psychiatrist twenty-five dollars an hour to find out why we rejected them. We’ll tell them why we rejected them. Because they're impossible, that's why.

I wish to draw your attention to one item which reads “Fifty cents’ worth of spiced ham @ 70 cents.” I am aware of rising costs and the resultant strain on independent grocers, but nevertheless when I order fifty cents’ worth of spiced ham I expect to get it @ .50.

Col says you swallowed his whistle. If you didn’t, give it back to him.

He could never get a martini that was dry enough. His own method with martinis seems to have consisted in keeping the gin locked away in a separate closet and walking past it once a week carrying a bottle of vermouth.

The first dog I remember well was a large black and white mutt that was part German shepherd, part English sheep dog, and part collie – the wrong part in each case.

I don’t mean to say one word against beagles. They have rights just like other people. But it is a bit of a shock when you bring home a small ball of fluff in a shoebox, and in three weeks it’s as long as the sofa.

I wanted a house that would have four bedrooms for the boys, all of them located some distance from the living room – say in the next county somewhere.

I tend to remember the immortal words of that philosopher and father, Moss Hart, who once announced that in dealing with his children he kept one thing in mind: “We’re bigger than they are, and it’s our house.”

I do read in the textbooks that even an occasional spanking tends to make a child feel insecure. This may be so. On the other hand, if a child really needs a whacking and doesn’t get it, I feel very insecure.

I say, “Christopher, you're filthy!” and he remarks, “I resent that. I don’t deny it, but I resent it.”

Favorite Long Quote/Extract
It is safe to list three situations in which it is advisable to redo the living room:
(1) when you have the money;
(2) when you don’t have the money but are planning to go on The $64,000 Questions, where you will astonish all with your knowledge of rare bindings;
(3) when you don’t have the money and there’s not a chance in the world you're going to get the money, but if you have to look at that speckled blue wallpaper one more day you will go smack out of your mind.

Speaking for myself, I am wary of producers who come in pairs. (And any number greater than two is absolutely unthinkable; in this case you have a pride of producers, like a pride of lions, with roughly the same inherent hazards.)

In my short and merry life in the theatre, I have discovered that there are two sharply contrasting opinions about the place of the drama critic. While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theatre people agreed that the critic is an unnecessary evil.

My own attendance record (at the theatre) is rather higher than the average. This can be explained by the fact that I have those four small children and naturally have to get out a lot.

An interesting aspect of dramatic criticism is that an actor can remember his briefest notice well into senescence and long after he has forgotten his phone number and where he lives.

I wanted to get his skull between my hands and crack it like a cantaloupe. I wanted to scramble that face like a plate of eggs. I wanted to work him over till his blood ran the color of coffee. That’s when it came to me: I hadn’t had any breakfast.

I no sooner opened the door than they were at me again. This time I was ready. I smashed my eye into his fist, I forced my ribs into his boot, and the first thing he knew I was flat on my back in the hall.

She had just stepped from the tub. There she was as God made her, a mess.

I could feel the boredom grow and swell within me almost as if I had swallowed a beach ball.

Why must we chatter fruitlessly and endlessly about philosophy and politics? I confess that I am only interested in questions that touch the heart of another human being – “Who are you sleeping with?”; “What do you take for quick relief from acid indigestion?”

The Everest of my ambition is to teach my children the simple precepts of existence –“Keep your fingers out of the plate,” “Don’t wear your underwear to bed,” “Keep out of Federal institutions” – and somehow arrive at golden middle age with my larynx intact.

When I was younger and full of Dr. Spock I used to make the common mistake of trying to be “fair” with the children. At the peak of every crisis I would summon the entire brood from the four corners of the television set and ask stern, equivocal questions like “Who threw the calendar in the toilet?” Naturally, nobody did.

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.