Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it's still snowing.

... it's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting.

With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.

Success is outliving your failures

To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

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.

Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.