Sidney Joseph Perelman, 1901 – 1979
Born: 1 February 1904, Brooklyn, New York
Died: 17 October 1979, New York City
Jewish humorist, author, and screenwriter best known for humorous pieces published in The New Yorker. He co-wrote two Marx Brothers films (Horse Feathers and Monkey Business) and wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning Around the World in Eighty Days.
S. J. Perelman quotes:
A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.
S. J. Perelman
As for consulting a dentist regularly, my punctuality practically amounted to a fetish. Every twelve years I would drop whatever I was doing and allow wild Caucasian ponies to drag me to a reputable orthodontist.
S. J. Perelman
Before they made S J Perelman they broke the mold.
S. J. Perelman – The Best of S. J. Perelman (1947)
Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck.
S. J. Perelman – The Rising Gorge (1961)
Five months after I joined the enterprise, it was stricken with bankruptcy, the medical name for mercantile atrophy.
S. J. Perelman – Most Of the Most of S. J. Perelman (1992)
I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.
S. J. Perelman – Most Of the Most of S. J. Perelman (1992)
I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse.
S. J. Perelman
I’ve got Bright’s Disease and he’s got mine.
S. J. Perelman
In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that’s merely the vanity of advancing age.
S. J. Perelman
In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero’s shoulders and the heroine’s balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel.
S. J. Perelman – Most Of the Most of S. J. Perelman (1992)
Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.
S. J. Perelman
Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin, it’s the triumphant twang of a bedspring.
S. J. Perelman
The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.
S. J. Perelman
The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.
S. J. Perelman
The main obligation is to amuse yourself.
S. J. Perelman
