Patricia Marx

“You don't have to spend much time in Shanghai before you start to get all existential about the meaning of authenticity. Did you know that Shanghai is building nine satellite towns, each designed to mimic the architecture and culture of a different country?”

“New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce.”

“Unless you're a salesman, or a bad guest on a talk show, you don't call someone by his name that often.”

“Men still wear cologne, but I wish they wouldn't. No matter what you may believe, all men's fragrances smell like the air freshener in a taxi.”

“It's better to spend a lot on a getup you love than a fraction of that on something, or even five of those somethings, that you'll never bother to take out of the shopping bag. By the way, this advice also applies to discount love interests. And half-price sushi.”

“Perhaps the most mysterious of all mammals is the male Homo sapiens. Indeed, many anthropologists classify the group as a subspecies.”

“Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is.”

“I do not find the concept of consorting with unknown persons appealing.”

“For somebody who is a journalist, I can be awfully unobservant sometimes.”

“New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn't even sit down, and not just because there is no room.”

“I'm a goody-goody. I'm the person who sits in the back row, makes fun of the teacher, and secretly does the extra-credit work.”

“I think I began to like writing a lot more, and to be a better writer, when I did it for a while alone. It made me a little more confident about my style.”

“If only, I thought, I could talk to Eugene just one more time. This was before I came to understand that you cannot make someone fall in love with you But here's what you can do. By arguing and pleading and screaming and crying and throwing plates and phoning a lot and bringing hot food and sending flowers and buying gifts and doing unsolicited favors and remembering a birthday and being nice and declaring your abiding love and trying hard or sometimes merely by being present, you can make someone who was hitherto lukewarm really detest you.”

“One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.”

“'Couch surfing' refers to the practice of temporarily lodging with a stranger - free of charge, unless you count being incessantly sociable as payment.”

“The Chinese are no slouches when it comes to capitalism.”

“High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.”

“There better not be a God because I'll be in big trouble.”

“Males have probably always enjoyed watching the defeat of other males, but without the invention of numerals and the subsequent invention of the concept of keeping score, we could never have had a million sports channels.”

“Being serious just makes me a little bit embarrassed.”