As for Lady Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat in the British Parliament, I want to talk to her about her exchanges with Winston Churchill, some of them more documented than others.
While they were both Conservative, Churchill resented her presence in Parliament. Thankfully she seems to have been able to stand her ground.
Winston: "I find a woman's intrusion into the House of Commons as embarrassing as if she burst into my bathroom when I had nothing to defend myself with, not even a sponge."
Nancy: "You are not handsome enough to have worries of that kind."
One famous quote that lives on through history describes her telling him, "Winston, if I was married to you I'd put poison in your coffee". He apparently replied: "Nancy, if I was married to you, I'd gladly drink it."
Astor is also said to have responded to a question from Churchill about what disguise he should wear to a masquerade ball by saying, "Why don't you come sober, Prime Minister?"
Astor sure had a way with words, as did Churchill. I love their reported sparring, the quick-wittedness of it.
I'm not sure how much time either Tory politician spent in the London district of Notting Hill but the movie of the same name has some fantastic lines.
It was written by Wellington-born Richard Curtis.
Notting Hill is a romance but Winston and Nancy could draw inspiration for their exchanges.
"I'm also just a girl standing in front of a boy asking you to love her," Julia Roberts' character says to Hugh Grant's character.
"The more I think about things, the more I see no rhyme or reason in life. No one knows why some things work out and some things don't," says Bella, who now uses a wheelchair and has just found out she and her husband can't have children.
This could be an eloquent way for a politician to explain an unfulfilled policy promise.
It's unlikely they would need to consider such anatomical detail in a bill they might be debating though. "You may show the dent of the top of the artist's buttocks but not the cheek."
The genesis of my musing on clever phrases is a book I picked up at the Red Cross book fair, A Dictionary of New Zealand Political Quotations.
It's not often New Zealand punches below its weight, but it sure does in the quotes selected for this book. It was published in 2000, so hopefully our pollies' wittedness has improved over the past 22 years. Some of the quotes could benefit from more context too, especially those that are more than 100 years old.
The verbal darts are not as sharp, not as shiny. Then perhaps that's a good thing.
Here's David Lange on the media: "If they stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about them." It took me a while to get my head around that one.
Our very own Winston features prominently. "For that member's information, there is a train leaving town at 5 o'clock. Be under it." Brutal, not constructive, but succinct and brilliant.
Back to England. Opposition leader Sir Kier Starmer's labelling of those Tory ministers supporting Prime Minister Boris Johnson as "the charge of the lightweight brigade" was so clever some Conservative frontbenchers smirked in reaction.
To quote Tennyson:
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them.
Thankfully our cannons are only coming from Mother Nature this winter. And while watching movies and reading books won't warm our toes it will our hearts and brains.