Doughnut Quotes

I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut.

As it turned out, everyone wanted a doughnut. Jace wanted two.

The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole.

Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.

Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?

Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?" "Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead, I said solemnly, and frosting of white.

People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for no reason at all.

Now-what’s our game plan?” Coach Hedge belched. He’d already had three espressos and a plate of doughnuts, along with two napkins and another flower from the vase on the table. He would’ve eaten the silverware, except Piper had slapped his hand. “Climb the mountain,” Hedge said. “Kill everything except Piper’s dad. Leave.” “Thank you General Eisenhower,” Jason grumbles.

Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?

This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut.

Oh, Claire," he said. "You think me a far better man than I am. That's kind, and flattering." "Are you saying that you -" "Doughnuts!" Myrnin interrupted her and darted away, to zip back in seconds with an open box.

Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.

The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut. You don't really know what it's about until you bite into it. And then, just when you decided it's good, you drop a big glob of jelly on your best T-shirt.

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

But they were doughnuts of darkness. Evil, damned doughnuts, tainted by the spawn of darkness . . . . . . which could obviously be redeemed only by passing through the fiery, cleansing inferno of a wizardly digestive tract.

Ranger sent us to check on you," Hal said. "We just got here, and we heard shots." "Some moron ate my jelly doughnut," Lula said. "So I shot him.

Okay, take a deep breath, I told myself. Don't go all hormonal. Get the facts straight. Have a mental doughnut.

Well fine, then. I could send you out to win my favor. Possibly on a quest involving bringing a large mug of coffee and a doughnut. Or the wholesale slaughter of all my enemies. I haven't decided which.

You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun

Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,” murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. “Go take a flying fuck at the moon

I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.

Did you bring me a hamburger? Did I-No,Myrnin,I didn't bring you a hamburger.Bizarre.He'd never asked for that before. Coffee? It's late. Doughnuts? No. What good are you then?

I’m still a doughnut, okay?” I said. “I want to be a bun. I really do. But I’m still a doughnut.

She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?

Babe," Ranger said. "You're looking a little strung out. Is there anything I should know?" I'm on a sugar withdrawal. I've given up desert and it's all I can think about." That had been true five minutes ago. Now that Ranger was standng in front of me I was thinking a cupcake wasn't what I actually needed. Maybe I can help you get your mind off doughnuts," Ranger said. My mouth dropped open, and I think some drool might have dribbled out.

I also stole a small yellow doughnut from the box of Duncan's doughnuts in the rec room and fed it to the attack poodle in my office. He made a great production of it. First, he growled at the doughnut, just to show it who was boss. Then he nudged it with his nose. Then he licked it, until finally he snagged it into his mouth and chomped it with great pleasure, dropping crumbs all over the carpet.

Hard to protect your food, with your ass anchored." He saluted me with the doughnut. "When you're ready to talk, call me. You know the number." He walked out.

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night.

Do you scent the same things I do?” Ransom made a face when she described what she’d picked up from the passing vamp. “Yeah, except I don’t say shit like ‘cinnamon spice with a hint of burnt oak.’ I say ‘dude smells like an electrified tree with a side of doughnut topping.

You scare the filling out of her doughnut.

He is better than warm fall colors better than beautiful music better than doughnuts and coffee

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!

I'd hate to list our specialties. Wreck cars, eat doughnuts, create mayhem.

As you ramble on through life, Brother, Whatever be your goal, Keep your eye upon the doughnut, And not upon the hole.

I was going to go to church, but I decided to get doughnuts instead.

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

She figured if you weren't woman enough to carry your doughnuts with pride, you shouldn't be eating them.

Mr. Lynn gave her one of his considering looks. "People are strange," he said. "Usually they're much stranger than you think. Start from there and you'll never be unpleasantly surprised. Do you fancy doughnuts?

You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel ****ed up for no reason at all.

Ortus wasn’t made in his mould. Coupling him to Harrow had been rather like yoking a doughnut to a cobra.

Seth rolled his eyes. “Because you’re such a ladies man.” “I can be. I just have standards, is all. I’m very selective about who I choose to spend time with, whereas you’ll fuck anything that moves. And several things that don’t.

Nick tried a pastry. The lady at the café had called them 'farturas'. (...) -- but when Nico first heard 'fartura' he knew Percy would have made a joke out of the name. 'Ammerica has dough-nuts', Percy would have said. 'Portugal has fart-nuts.

You're a cop. I need a doughnut.

I want to hate him, but I'll never succeed if he keeps bringing me doughnuts.

My advice: write down everything you eat. It's amazing what that "self honesty" can do for you. (Do you really want to have to confess that doughnut? I thought not.)

I'll share my life with you. But, not my doughnuts.

Doughnuts Music Love It doesn't get any better than this

Jerks," I muttered. Then I brightened. "Oh, hey. Doughnuts.

Did you smuggle doughnuts out of the wedding in your pocket?

People think that food cheers you up, that a doughnut cures all ills, but this only works for trivial complaints. When real disaster strikes, food chokes you.

Stephanie, I'm begging you. Eat some doughnuts. I can't keep going like this." - Morelli

Percy!’ Annabeth scolded. ‘You just opened another Monster Doughnut shop somewhere!

I'm looking for a man" Bree started. "Aren't we all, dear? All I got's bread and doughnuts, but they're the next best thing" "I don't know about that .. well maybe doughnuts. I've lost my .. friend. He's tall-sixfour-longish dark hair, wearing a kilt" "Oh him" She smacked a hand over her heart "I'd take him over doughnuts any day

And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I'd sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I've never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my written work. All too often it is to the imagination what ash stakes are to vampires.

It's like doughnut holes. Whether you take a doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

Now all I have to worry about is what might crawl out of the darkness to get me in the night.” “Yeah, well, I think there’s a box of doughnuts under the chair. You can toss those to distract it.

Started to go to the gym,” she said. “You know, to work off some of the baby fat. Only I couldn’t find my membership card and a new one was ten bucks. And since a doughnut and coffee was only three bucks, guess who saved seven bucks this morning?

Blackjack made a grumbling sound. Reyna could’ve sworn he tried to say doughnuts. She must have been going delirious.

And maybe,” said Marjory, “we can find a few 641.8653 to go with it.” “Ooh,” said Andrew. “I love doughnuts.

No. Really. I’ve thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people anymore. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become . . . a doughnut instead of a bun.

What’s up?” Emma called. “We’re almost ready.” “I just wanted to tell you to come down,” Mark said. “We are all eager to hear your story, and I’ve made my famous doughnut sandwiches.” “I’m not sure ‘Tavvy likes them’ is exactly what most people mean when they say ‘famous,’ ” Emma said.

There are four ways to manage stress. There's drugs, there's alcohol, there's sex, and there's doughnuts. I go with sex and doughnuts. I tried the other two and it wasn't any good. You being in a dry spell, you might have to rely on doughnuts.

Over my lifetime, I've had an interesting relationship with poop...the rectum is a grand thing. My favorite thing about the human body is that we're all basically doughnuts.

I need nothing I have everything I need I lie upon the coffin a doughnut in my hand

There’s always tomorrow.” “Exactly,” she said, finishing off her first doughnut, selecting a second. Maybe she wouldn’t starve to death, she decided. Maybe she’d eat herself into obesity and explode. Death by doughnut.

In spite of really intense competition for the job, I'm still my own worst enemy.

Like the hindsight paradox,” he continues, when he’s bought the doughnuts. “Everyone thinks they knew what was going to happen. They said, I knew it all along! but, actually, they would say that no matter what the outcome. Because our brains are so good at considering every possibility. We’ve known whenever anything was going to happen.

We need to get you to stop thinking of me as a friend, and start thinking of me as that incredibly hot mechanic you’re sleeping with.” “You are a friend, why do we need to do that?” “Because you’re stiff as a board and not in the way I want you to be.

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

Frosting was his favorite. He liked to eat doughnuts at every meal. Because it was healthier to eat six small meals a day than three large ones, he restricted himself: jellied for breakfast, glazed for brunch, cream-filled for lunch, frosting for linner, chocolate for dinner, and powdered sugar for 2 a.m. supermarket stakeout. Because linner coincided with the daily crime peak, he always ate his favorite variety to ease him. Frosting was his only choice now, and upsetting his routine was a quiet thrill.

Maybe time is nothing at all like a straight line. Perhaps it's shaped like a twisted doughnut. But for tens of thousands of years, people have probably been seeing time as a straight line that continues on forever. And that's the concept they based their actions on. And until now they haven't found anything inconvenient or contradictory about it. So as an experiential model, it's probably correct.

When the older folks I interviewed described the reasons that they dated, got engaged to, and then married their eventual spouses, they'd say things like "He seemed like a pretty good guy," "She was a nice girl;" "He had a good job," and "She had access to doughnuts and I like doughnuts.

I’m pretty sure I locked that door,” Daemon growled. Luc set the box of doughnuts down, and I eyed them like they held the answer to life. “And I’m pretty sure I let myself in. Hey, Katy!” I jumped at my name. “Hey, Luc..” “Look at what I got.” He dug into his bag and pulled out an extraterrestrial highway shirt. “We can be soul twins now.

It sounded a bit like his mother, a woman who’d lied to him about the existence of Santa Claus and was therefore not to be trusted on matters of any importance.

So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.

For you time-capsule types, MoPo was something called a convenience store, as in, 'The soda is conveniently located right next to the doughnuts and lottery tickets.' People who want to understand better how the human race was conquered so easily need to study those stores. Almost everything inside was filled with sugar, cheese, or weight-loss tips

He made a conscious decision not to think about it, and accordingly spent the rest of his shift thinking about nothing else.

He came up to me and kissed my neck, cupping the side of my face with his hand. He whispered, "Now give me your keys" "Over my dead body.

Here’s the conundrum: No country has ever ended human deprivation without a growing economy. And no country has ever ended ecological degradation with one.

Wise people will say Daniel should like me just as I am, but I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices. I can’t take the pressure. I am going to cancel and spend the evening eating doughnuts in a cardigan with egg on it.

But certainly the two best-known tales in the neighborhood - the key hauntings, if you will - concern the Red Room and the Screaming Staircase.' There was a profound silence, abruptly broken by an enormously loud rumble from George's stomach. Plaster didn't actually fall from the ceiling, but it was close. 'Sorry,' he said cheerfully. 'Famished. I think I"ll have another doughnut, if you don't mind. Any takers?

She was debating calling the lab and pushing for her tattoo when Peabody poked her head in. “We got—Hey, doughnuts.” “You’ll get yours. What have we got?” “Marc Tuluz. Want him in here or the lounge?” “Here’s a puzzler,” Eve began. “If we’re in the lounge interviewing him, how many doughnuts will be in this box upon our return?” “I’ll bring him in here.

Hello, tiny life-form of star compost, did you know that your lizardly life, too, is billiarded this way and that by quantum scissors, papers and stones? That your particles exist in a time-froth of little bridges and holes forever going back and around and under itself ? That the universe is the shape of a doughnut, and that if you had a powerful enough telescope you would see the tip of your tail?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't we just get beat up for not being fags?" "Sorry, you just don't scream hetero he-man, dude. I wouldn't call you flaming or anything, but let's just say your toes are singed. Hell, I read straighter than you do." "I hate to break it to you, but I'm probably too drunk to fuck.

...I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning...

I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to marry Henri. I want to marry Eikko.” “Who?” “Erik. His translator. I’m in love with him, and I want to marry him. And even though he hates having his picture taken, I want to take a thousand so I can put him on my wall and wake up to us laughing every day, just like you do with Mom. And I want him to make me doughnuts, just like his mom does for his dad. Even if I have to let out all my dresses. And I want us to find our own thing or maybe find out that our own thing is everything, because I feel like if I have him, even the stupid stuff would matter.

For over 70 years economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the twenty-first century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.

I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs." "That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats." Templeton's eyes were blazing. " Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me." "It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten..." "That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!

Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst-- Heaven bless the mark!

Mathematicians still don’t understand the ball our hands made, or how your electrocuted grandparents made it possible for you to light my cigarettes with your eyes. It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the window to leave six ounces of orange juice and a doughnut by the bed, or me becoming the sand you dug your toes in, on the beach, when you wished to hide them from the sun and the fixed eyes of strangers, and your breath broke in waves over my earlobe, splashing through my head, spilling out over the opposite lobe, and my first poems under your door in the unshaven light of dawn: Your eyes remind me of a brick wall about to be hammered by a drunk driver. I’m that driver. All night I’ve swallowed you in the bar. Once I kissed the scar, stretching its sealed eyelid along your inner arm, dried raining strands of hair, full of pheromones, discovered all your idiosyncratic passageways, so I’d know where to run when the cops came. Your body is the country I’ll never return to. The man in charge of what crosses my mind will lose fingernails, for not turning you away at the border. But at this moment when sweat tingles from me, and blame is as meaningless as shooting up a cow with milk, I realise my kisses filled the halls of your body with smoke, and the lies came like a season. Most drunks don’t die in accidents they orchestrate, and I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.

Habits never really disappear. They’re encoded into the structures of our brain, and that’s a huge advantage for us, because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that your brain can’t tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards. This explains why it’s so hard to create exercise habits, for instance, or change what we eat. Once we develop a routine of sitting on the couch, rather than running, or snacking whenever we pass a doughnut box, those patterns always remain inside our heads. By the same rule, though, if we learn to create new neurological routines that overpower those behaviors—if we take control of the habit loop—we can force those bad tendencies into the background, just as Lisa Allen did after her Cairo trip. And once someone creates a new pattern, studies have demonstrated, going for a jog or ignoring the doughnuts becomes as automatic as any other habit.

How Do I Deal with My Toddler’s Behavior? Do what most parents do and drown your frustrations in doughnuts and beer come bedtime. Personal trainers and fitness nuts will tell you that eating before bed is bad for your health and waistline. What these idiots don’t understand is that you need to snack so that you don’t abandon your family in the night. When it comes down to it, isn’t it preferable to inhale a bag of Doritos and be forty or fifty pounds overweight than to leave your toddler without a parent? You’re doing the right thing by eating your emotions. Living with a toddler isn’t the time for you to be worried about having a thigh gap. Fun fact: You can actually create a thigh gap no matter what you weigh just by standing with your legs apart. See? Gap. (But, remember, thigh gaps are dangerous because toddlers can use them to climb back into your uterus.)

When Adam Smith, extolling the power of the market, noted that, ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner’, he forgot to mention the benevolence of his mother, Margaret Douglas, who had raised her boy alone from birth. Smith never married so had no wife to rely upon (nor children of his own to raise). At the age of 43, as he began to write his opus, The Wealth of Nations, he moved back in with his cherished old mum, from whom he could expect his dinner every day. But her role in it all never got a mention in his economic theory, and it subsequently remained invisible for centuries.

Depicting rational economic man as an isolated individual – unaffected by the choices of others – proved highly convenient for modelling the economy, but it was long questioned even from within the discipline. At the end of the nineteenth century, the sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen berated economic theory for depicting man as a ‘self-contained globule of desire’, while the French polymath Henri Poincaré pointed out that it overlooked ‘people’s tendency to act like sheep’.31 He was right: we are not so different from herds as we might like to imagine. We follow social norms, typically preferring to do what we expect others will do and, especially if filled with fear or doubt, we tend to go with the crowd. One

Benefits Now—Costs Later We have seen that predictable problems arise when people must make decisions that test their capacity for self-control. Many choices in life, such as whether to wear a blue shirt or a white one, lack important self-control elements. Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time. At one extreme are what might be called investment goods, such as exercise, flossing, and dieting. For these goods the costs are borne immediately, but the benefits are delayed. For investment goods, most people err on the side of doing too little. Although there are some exercise nuts and flossing freaks, it seems safe to say that not many people are resolving on New Year’s Eve to floss less next year and to stop using the exercise bike so much. At the other extreme are what might be called sinful goods: smoking, alcohol, and jumbo chocolate doughnuts are in this category. We get the pleasure now and suffer the consequences later. Again we can use the New Year’s resolution test: how many people vow to smoke more cigarettes, drink more martinis, or have more chocolate donuts in the morning next year? Both investment goods and sinful goods are prime candidates for nudges. Most (nonanorexic) people do not need any special encouragement to eat another brownie, but they could use some help exercising more.