"Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go."

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."

"There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say 'Yes I've got dreams of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it and yep they're still there. These are great dreams but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line to hold them up and say 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in."

"I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order."

"I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars."

"One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip."

"I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes."

"Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you."

"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."

"I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up."

"It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding."

"Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart."

"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."

"One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country the American dollar will fall like a stone."

"Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time."

"Never have more children than you have car windows."

"Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children."

"House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad."

"I am not a glutton-I am an explorer of food."

"Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown."

"Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving."

"Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on."

"Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you."

"Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy."

"On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings."

"When humor goes, there goes civilization."

"Written on her tombstone: 'I told you I was sick."

"Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial."

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'."

"In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale."

"In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."

"Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments."

"I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: "Checkout Time is 18 years.""

"How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?"

"Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. 'Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?' Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?' Wasn't there any change?"

"There was a time when the one singular thing that held a marriage together was the threat of getting the kids."

"The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one."

"My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?"

"I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair."

"There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it."

"Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other."

"Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated."

"For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward."

"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food."

"A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday."

"Children make your life important."

"My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car."

"A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend - and he's a priest."

"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."

"A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat."