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“... away towards the Métro with his characteristic step, redolent both of the Conquistador and of Groucho Marx.’ And if the religion is unreal, so is the Paris of this novel, though it has all the details needed to take you in – the food and wine, the florist’s shop, the Métro stations, even Malraux living in Boulogne-sur-Seine and the shade of ...”

“... world of the castle strange opportunities arise when the person he calls ‘the party’ – as in Groucho Marx’s ‘party of the first part’ – manages to surprise in the middle of the night an official who is not the one assigned to his case but nevertheless has some competence in the matter. K is already half-asleep, but able to hear most of ...”

“... milk or lemon in his tea, was told ‘Both’. C.P. Snow said of Feynman that it was as if ‘Groucho Marx was suddenly standing in for a great scientist.’ But it was not so much Groucho as Trickster, Loki or Zebedee. For all the studied naivety and scientific intuitiveness, Feynman’s supreme skills were those ...”

“... and hailed as ‘an element of the future’. Nastya’s appearance is fortuitous and absurd, in a Groucho Marx sort of way (‘Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report – run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it’). The group are discussing installing a wireless, to keep the ‘backward masses’ from ...”

“... friend Shorty, stares into the camera, and then comes loping towards us in a walk which suggests Groucho Marx converting to jitterbug. ‘The shot cost about one million dollars,’ Lee says. ‘We felt it was important from the jump, from the git-go to let people know this is a big movie, no skimpy, fake-ass wannabe shit.’ Lee’s idea of a big movie ...”

“... we count Nixonides the Cretin, who said ‘this statement is inoperative.’ The references to Marx point only to a George Marx, for Rubik cubology, and a Groucho Marx, for comic analogy. Perhaps I enjoy Hofstadter’s discussion of super-rational strategy for the wrong ...”

“... which Denis Healey may have been the first to make, that ‘Labour owed more to Methodism than to Marx.’ From his religion, Bevin probably also derived his frugality and diligence. Though he drank and smoked himself to death, and enjoyed the music hall and Chelsea Football Club, he refused all honours and never sought a penny beyond his salary, so that ...”

“... myself boy ... what you think of that?’ Or Dr Schacter, who zips into and out of the story like Groucho Marx, leaving words of wisdom floating in the air: ‘Yah, von must keep assets liquid, suitcases packed, lif close to the border, yah.’ Given these considerable talents, it is perhaps understandable that Jack Pulaski does not always bother to ...”

“... the value of the Club.’ (An enthusiastic social climber, Boswell might have got first to the Groucho Marx line – not wanting to be in a club that would have him as a member – if he hadn’t lacked the self-knowledge.) Fines were instituted in 1775 for Londoners who failed to attend without good cause, but some, notably Sheridan and Charles James ...”

“... must. The attractive publication, briefly and informatively introduced, of the scripts* of several Marx Brothers films – Monkey Business (1931), Duck Soup (1933) and A Day at the Races (1937) – is a sublime invitation to stop and think about our swings of convulsiveness and weariness in the face of these films; to sense that it is essential to the ...”

“... because she does not, for the most part, write prose: she writes speech. She is the daughter of Groucho Marx and the mother of Woody Allen. You can pick it up from the far side of the Atlantic: ‘She says I called Mrs Z. a grizzly bear a few times. It’s my wife, no? ... ’ ‘She died in front of the television set. She didn’t miss a trick ...”

“... for a chat. Some of the foreign journalists who went to see him began to ask themselves the Groucho Marx question: do I want to interview a general who has time to be interviewed? There was a pair of tanks parked outside his building, but a better symbol of his style was the sofa which he had placed in the little elevated yard leading to the ...”

“... 1,951 entries, the Bible next with 1,341. At random: Browning gets 265, Kipling 202, Housman 97, Marx (Karl) 11, Marx (Groucho) one. Mandy Rice-Davies (1944-  ) gets one with ‘He would, wouldn’t he?’ when, at the trial of Stephen Ward, June 1963, she was told that Lord X ...”

“... place I had ever been in my life. One weekend, as we filmed in an empty gallery in Mayfair, Groucho Marx walked past the window. Once I opened the cutting-room door and there was Truffaut. Karel took me into his life and into his family and he took on the business of turning me into whatever it is I’ve become. It seemed as if I had acquired no ...”

“... Girl was a fiction and a mask – ‘Mae West, Theda Bara and Bo Peep all rolled into one’, said Groucho Marx – which served to turn a case of ordinary, everyday wishing into a triumph of calculated stardom. There is hardly a single area of Norma Jeane’s life that wasn’t fluffed up to enhance Marilyn’s exotic stature. The Girl, the resulting ...”