I appealed to her stale flesh very seldom, only in cases of great urgency and despair. - Vladimir Nabokov

There is nothing louder than an American hotel; and, mind you, this was supposed to be a quiet, cozy, old-fashioned, homey place - 'gracious living' and all that stuff.

To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would - invariably, with icy precision - plump for the former.

Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature — these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know.