Hmm...

Regarding a request from AIG to invest last September:

“It’s like taking out a girl -- sometimes you know it isn’t going to happen,” Buffett said “The time pressures, the degree of uncertainty, the depth of the possible hole, the need to get it through a regulatory body,” he said. “It wasn’t going to happen.”

Not quite as pithy as his former aphorisms such as, "When the tide goes out, you get to see whose swimming without their suit," but equally revealing.