My own coinage, employed most often to myself when my expectatations have tripped me up once again, is “Hope springs infernal.”

Also, Jenna, the “getting dizzy” one is cute. There’s something I like to say to gently call someone’s attention to their being self-centered & narcissistic. I forget where I got it, but it goes: “And what color is the sky in your world?”

Does it say something about me that I’m so interested in a conversation about insults?

A friend of mine worked in a comic book studio in San Diego, and- oh, this isn’t going to work at all. They had a backhanded way of insulting someone’s work that involved a veiled reference to a disdained rival studio. But as I prefer not to name the rival studio, I suppose that’s not really much of a kneeslapper.

Never mind…

I love Winston Churchill.

In theater, I think we all have a collection of phrases to say if a show is awful, but we don’t want to admit it. My favorite is “I would never have thought to do it like that.”

“He’s a modest man with much to be modest about.”

Also, I forget the particular Society Lady with whom this exchange took place, but apparently they were discussing the case of a woman who had killed her husband by putting a drop of arsenic into his tea every day. Mr. Churchill said something to which she took umbrage:

Lady: Well, if I were your wife, I should surely poison your tea.

Mr. Churchill: And if I were your husband, madam, I should surely drink it.

“Do you get dizzy with the world revolving around you like that?”