“Discontented women are like pressure cookers. The steam rises and one day they just reach boiling point.”

“If pain is a pot of boiling water, humor can be the rising steam.”

“The Second Law of Pies: they must be baked, not fried (or boiled, or steamed).”

“The following doodle: a girl with pigtails is bent under the weight of a gigantic boulder. Her cheeks puff out, and her rounded lips expel steam. One widening steam cloud contains the word Pressure, darkly retraced.”

“You don't like the way the study of an expensive drug for blood pressure is going? A nonissue - just stop the study before the results reach statistical significance.”

“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”