“The Surprise Attack. This is when you think someone scaring you will frighten the hiccups away. Of course, popping a paper bag behind you or clapping in your ear isn’t going to cut it. No, this only works when somebody shoves you off a tall skyscraper ledge into a properly rigged-up safety net forty stories below.”

“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.”

“No ticket ripper should say anything, but if you do happen to get caught you can always pretend you’re diabetic. “Honestly, these are prescription Pop Rocks.”

“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.”

“Life's too short not to sleep when you feel like it.”

“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!”

“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.”