A chocolate cake slice beside two cream-colored cubes and a gold key on a burgundy background.

Original artwork, not a still

Alexander Woollcott

All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker puts every favorite activity into an unwelcome category. Pairing immoral and illegal with fattening gives the list a comic change of scale. Pleasure is set against disapproval in several forms, making personal taste sound inconveniently at odds with what is considered acceptable.

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