"The stupid person's idea of a clever person."--Elizabeth Bowen on Aldous Huxley

"That insolent little ruffian, that crapulous lout. When he quitted a sofa, he left behind him a smear."--Norman Cameron on Dylan Thomas

An insult can be bad-mannered, offensive, and infuriating, but every one of us has surely had one of those moments when we just wish we had thought of a good one. Unlike most of us, however, there are those who always seem to have the perfect comeback. 1001 Insults, Put-Downs, and Comebacks gathers together the very sharpest of these barbs from a wide variety of sources, with some of the wickedest put-downs from the literary, political, and entertainment worlds, along with many others, including:

-"A large shaggy dog unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon."--Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman

-"The triumph of sugar over diabetes."--George Nathan on J. M. Barrie

-"He was another one that was a complete fizzle . . . Pierce didn't know what was going on, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known what to do about it."--Harry Truman on Franklin Pierce

-"He is such an infernal liar."--Ulysses Grant on Andrew Johnson

-"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."--Mark Twain

-"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."--Groucho Marx

-"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."--Oscar Levant

A collection of often impolite, but always witty taunts from the world's masters of the studied insult.

Steven D. Price, a consulting editor of The Lyons Press, is the author of twenty-five books, including The Quotable Horse Lover, The Ultimate Fishing Guide, 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said, and 1001 Smartest Things Ever Said. A resident of New York City, he is exposed daily to cutting insults, rude put-downs, and quick comebacks.