Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

There are two kinds of people in this world: the ones who don't cook out of and have NEVER cooked out of THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK, and the other kind...The I HATE TO COOK people consist mainly of those who find other things more interesting and less fattening, and so they do it as seldom as possible. Today there is an Annual Culinary Olympics, with hundreds of cooks from many countries ardently competing. But we who hate to cook have had our own Olympics for years, seeing who can get out of the kitchen the fastest and stay out the longest.

It is always a taut moment in a foreign country waiting to see if your English-speaking guide speaks English.

It is important to remember that these are your Declining Years, in which you can jolly well decline to do what you don't feel like doing, unless not doing it would make you feel worse than doing it.

... parents embarrass their children probably more than the other way around. I don't know why we should blush so hard for our parents -- we didn't rear them -- and yet we do.

This wild emaciated look appeals to some women, though not to many men, who are seldom seen pinning up a Vogue illustration in a machine shop.

This is your dividing line, by the way, between child and nonchild - when the first trouble happens that Mama can't fix.