“The fact that you can go to the bathroom on an airplane is pretty novel. I bet nobody expected that a hundred years ago. Can you imagine two sailors looking over the front rails of their massive ocean liner in the early 1900s, one of them pointing way up in the clouds and whispering to the other, “One day a man will take a crap up there.” No, me either.”

“Bakery air is that steaming hot front of thick, buttery fumes waiting for you just inside the door of a bakery. And I am just going to tell you straight up: That is some fine air!”

“I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn’t even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house.”

“And so whether you were six with the chicken pox, nine with the flu, twelve with a broken arm, or fifteen with menstrual cramps, you could count on sixty solid minutes with the company of that old seventies set, lots of one-dollar bets, and advice to neuter your pet, all crunched into the best sick-day game show yet!”

“I will raise you like my own,” I promised the tiny basil pot that day. “I will give you sunlight, I will give you water, I will give you love.”“I will eat your limbs,” my girlfriend helpfully added rubbing her belly and licking her lips like a grizzly bear gazing up at a sticky beehive in a tall pine tree.”

“Have you ever put finger, algea-filled lake-water, or shampoo in there? Yeah, that gets your eyes screaming in pain pretty quick, doesn't it? Unless you're using baby No More Tears shampoo, of course, in which case feel free to lather your eyeballs right on up, no worries.”

“We're all going to get old one day. So let's just love the age we've got and let's not crave the age we're not. Amen, sing it to your mama.”