“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

It is my theory you can’t get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn’t turn it on.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

I make jam, and oh my God, it is so delicious.

Life is good when you have a good sandwich.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?

Finish your plate of food otherwise you won’t get any dessert later.

The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.

Say yes to everything. ‘You want me to buy you some food?’ Yes. ‘You want me to buy you a car?’ Yes.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Finish your food or you won’t get any dessert later.