I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding.

The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

Sign outside a country shop: We buy junk and sell antiques.

See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.

The Soviet Union at this time was being run by the Communists, a group of men fierce in their dedication to wearing hilariously bad suits. Their leader was Josef Stalin (Russian for "Joey Bananas")

9 saw the first direct-dialed long-distance telephone call, between New York and San Francisco. Of course, back in that primitive era the parties had to speak to each other manually; today one or both ends of the conversation would be carried on by a machine.