Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.

Know your load. That's rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I'm not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando twobirds short of a dinner party....I know I'm pulling out of Houston with exactly forty-two Gentoo penguins, seventeen Jamaican land iguanas, four tuataras from New Zealand, and a pair of rare, civet-like mammals called linsangs. No more, no less.

Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery.

Nothing spices up one's sex life like having a partner.

Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it.

If freedom means anything at all, it is the right to primacy in regard to sexuality, reproduction, medical care and death.