Try asking a major star to play a real Mafia head, a man who makes a living off whores and child pornography, heroin and blood

Here is one of the basic lessons a screenwriter must learn and live with: Stars will not play weak and they will not play blemished, and you better know that now.

Sure, Brando and Pacino will play mafia chieftans in The Godfather. But those are cute Mafia chieftains. They're only warring on bad Mafia guys and crooked cops; they're only trying to hold the family business together. Try asking a major star to play a real Mafia head, a man who makes a living off whores and child pornography, heroin and blood; sorry folks, those parts go to the character actors or the has-beens. Or actors on the come who haven't achieved star status.

W. Goldman, Adventures in the screen trade (1983), 37

A medley of allusions, which add up now to a place which no longer exists in any sense at all

The Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s survives now only in my mind, and in the minds of others. Most of whom knew it a great deal better than I did. For I did not know it at all, I realize, any more than I knew Cairo in any real sense. Much of it I never even saw — the densely populated slum quarters to the west of the city, the labyrinthine streets of downtown Alexandria, tucked behind the boulevards and shops. It was not one city but half a dozen, in which people moved on different planes, segregated by class and culture. And for me there was the further segregation of childhood. My Alexandria was a sybaritic dream. Peanuts in a paper cone, eaten on the Corniche. The suck and whoosh of the sea at the Spouting Rock. The milky-green curve of a surfing wave. The cool grip of a chameleon. Pistachio ice-cream. Macaroons. A medley of allusions, which add up now to a place which no longer exists in any sense at all.

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), 129

The central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters

Most young children take a pretty animistic line where domestic pets are concerned. For a number of years I was one of the judging panel for the largest children's creative-writing competition in this country and came to realize that the central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters. Cats and dogs came next, with budgies doing quite well also.

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), 47

Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket

As for the proverb 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket', that, in Carnegie's opinion, was nonsense. His advice was to 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket.'

Carnegie, of course, was preaching what he had practiced, for those were the methods he had used to get to the top (although, to give a rounded picture, he should also have mentioned the benefits of insider trading, crony capitalism and screwing down wages).

D. Reynolds, America: Empire of Liberty (2009), 245

Like a badger

[Andrew Johnson] was of an obstinate, suspicious temper. Like a badger, one had to dig him out of hole; and he was ever in one except on the hustings, addressing the crowd.

Richard Taylor, cited in D. Reynolds, America: Empire of Liberty (2009), 220