“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”

“She believed in the principle of enoughness." from "About Alice”

“I never did very well in math-I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.”

“When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.”

“Was the Buffalo chicken wing inventedwhen Teressa Bellissimo thought of splitting it in half and deep frying it and serving it with celery and blue-cheese dressing? Was it invented when John Young started using mambo sauceand thought of elevating wings into a specialty?”

“Do my ears deceive me, or can I actually hear the sounds of worms turning? You say a turning worm makes no sound? But how about a chorus of turning worms?”

“I suppose it's possible that the Sundance Kid didn't like to make much of his birthdays — they may have struck him as just another reminder that his draw was getting slower by the year—but what if he truly liked a major celebration? What if he looked forward every year to marking the day of his birth with what they used to call in the West 'a real wingding, with pink balloons and a few survivors'?”