He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
Meaning of the quote
This quote compares a person's appearance to a dry martini cocktail. When someone is described as being "white and shaken", it means they look very pale and unsettled, just like a martini that has been stirred and chilled to the point of being clear and crisp. The author is using this vivid comparison to help the reader visualize the character's anxious, tense state of mind.
About P. G. Wodehouse
P.G. Wodehouse was an acclaimed English writer and humorist who created beloved characters like Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. He was a prolific author, publishing over 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories during his long career. Despite facing controversy later in life, Wodehouse’s witty and whimsical works have endured as classics of 20th-century literature.
More quotes from P. G. Wodehouse
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
English author (1881-1975)
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
English author (1881-1975)
Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
English author (1881-1975)
I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
English author (1881-1975)
He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “when!”
English author (1881-1975)
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.
English author (1881-1975)
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
English author (1881-1975)
She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say “when.”
English author (1881-1975)
Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.
English author (1881-1975)
He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.
English author (1881-1975)
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
English author (1881-1975)
The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
English author (1881-1975)
Golf… is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.
English author (1881-1975)
Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
English author (1881-1975)
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
English author (1881-1975)
Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.
English author (1881-1975)
It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
English author (1881-1975)
Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.
English author (1881-1975)
Golf, like measles, should be caught young.
English author (1881-1975)
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
English author (1881-1975)
There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.
English author (1881-1975)
Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
English author (1881-1975)
To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.
English author (1881-1975)
Flowers are happy things.
English author (1881-1975)