It has been explained to me that toys are packaged in shards, to be assembled by the middle-aged and butter-fingered, because this makes it easier for the shippers. ... If they had to spend hours and hours putting handlebars onto bicycles ... they would repent their ways and deliver something that looked like a rocking horse and not like the result of a small street accident.

Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review, it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write "I had a fun time"? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

In the beginning, we made the usual mistake of looking at houses we could afford. I am working on a proposition, hereafter to be known as Kerr's law, which states in essence: All the houses you can afford to buy are depressing.

I'm not so sure it's so civilized to be civilized all the time.

I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.

Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.