Daily Inspiration Quote by George S. Kaufman

A line like this lands because it’s doing two things at once: it’s selling a joke and smuggling in a worldview. Kaufman frames dinner as a transaction, not an encounter. The “invite” sounds gallant, but the power sits with “I expect,” and the punchline is the brutal bookkeeping of “price.” What’s being purchased isn’t sex or affection in any romantic sense, but attention itself: her gaze, her performance of interest, her compliance with the ritual that flatters the host. It’s a comic inversion of the usual dating-market cynicism. Instead of the woman “costing” the man money, the man “costs” the woman her time and attention - and he says it as if he’s the one being exploited.

The subtext is insecurity sharpened into entitlement. “Look at my face” reads like self-deprecation (Kaufman was famously no-nonsense, not movie-star charming), but it’s also a demand for validation: if he’s paying, she must supply the esteem. That’s why the line stings; it turns the human act of sharing a meal into a petty toll booth.

Context matters: Kaufman’s comedy belongs to early-to-mid 20th-century Broadway, where sophistication often meant armor-plated banter and romance was treated as a con game conducted by well-dressed adults. The era’s gender etiquette - men pay, women “entertain” - is both the target and the fuel. The quip gets its bite from acknowledging the ugliness underneath polite courtship, then daring the audience to laugh at it anyway.