"At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy."

"If you were to open up a baby's head - and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should - you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland."

"I believe it was Shakespeare, or possibly Howard Cosell, who first observed that marriage is very much like a birthday candle, in that 'the flames of passion burn brightest when the wick of intimacy is first ignited by the disposable butane lighter of physical attraction, but sooner or later the heat of familiarity causes the wax of boredom to drip all over the vanilla frosting of novelty and the shredded coconut of romance.' I could not have phrased it better myself."

"I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me."

"In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test."

"Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it."

"The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter."

"It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent."

"I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer."

"You're only young once but you can always be immature."

"The world is full of strange phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of logic or science. Dennis Rodman is only one example."

"Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting."

"And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West."

"The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes."

"You can say any fool thing to a dog and the dog will just give you this look that says, 'My GOSH, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that!"

"American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it."

"Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators."

"Newspaper readership is declining like crazy. In fact, there's a good chance that nobody is reading my column."

"I would say that the single most important conclusion I reached after traveling through Japan as well as countless hours reading studying and analyzing this fascinating culture is that you should always tighten the cap on the shampoo bottle before you put it in your suitcase."

"Reading... a vacation for the mind...."

"The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby's grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida."

"As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula."

"I liked making people laugh, and I decided I was an atheist early on. My Dad was all right with that. We argued about it all the time, but it was good-natured. He was the most open-minded human being I've ever known."

"Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down."

"Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around."

"The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in 'calories,' which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none."