“A Clinical Study. Taking some time to read each night really taught me how to feign narcolepsy when my husband asked me what my “plan” was for taking down the Christmas tree.”

Lesson learned? When people say, “You really, really must” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When it’s true, it doesn’t need to be said.

This week, penny collector Gene Sukie went to the bank and cashed in ten thousand pounds of pennies he had collected over 34 years, which were worth over fourteen thousand dollars. And, of course, I was in line behind him.

I don’t like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don’t think that fighting and passion are the same thing.

Nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet.

You can’t control things by being nervous.

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important Rule of Beauty. “Who cares?”

You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.

My work is my work. I take my work seriously but I don’t take myself too seriously.

I feel like there is a lot of inherent humor in the stress and insanity surrounding that process.

To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair.

I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.

There are no mistakes only opportunities.

I am going to dedicate myself, full time, to my day-drinking.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays – beyond their meaning – a factor in our economy.

I mean, what’s he doing now? He’s evolving. Evolving? Well, evolve for Christ’s sake! And this is a guy – the whole gay community, and the whole environmental community and all these other people said, he’s our guy.

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?

For Christmas when I was about four I got given ‘Can the can’ by Susie Quatro, so that was the first record I got. And I got Skyhooks “Ego is not a Dirty Word….

We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart…filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.