Hatter (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) the other is a bureau with a quill!" The RSPB, in its definition of Raven, states: "The raven [...] is all black with a large bill, and long wings." American author Stephen King provides an alternative answer to the Hatter's riddle in his 1977 horror novel "The Shining". Snowbound and isolated "ten thousand feet high" in the Rocky Mountains, the five-year-old son "Danny" hears whispers of the malign "voice of the [Overlook] hotel" inside his head, including this bit of mockery, "why is a raven like a writing desk? The higher the fewer, of course! Have another cup of tea!"
A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody one of his five most important songs structurally, saying he used the "same rhythmic pattern" in other songs. Later he called it "the best individual song written for a musical". Josh Rubins wrote in 1988 that "'A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody'—one of Berlin-the-composer's best things—has been seriously damaged by overexposure and insensitive handling". He states that by the 1960s "the song's first four chords devolved into a vaudeville gag: musical shorthand for any reference to overt female sexuality (or transvestism)." Magee in 2012 argues for a reappraisal in the light of the rediscovered classical verses, writing that "a