Paula Poundstone Quotes

Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.

The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer.

The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.

It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed.

My mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.

It is my wish to die of unique causes, perhaps in a high-speed tricycle crash, a bizarre stapling incient, or as a result of inadvertently sucking my brains out through my ear while trying to untwist the vacuum hose.

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas. —PAULA POUNDSTONE

There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and she replied, "Well, hold on to something, stupid." There it is. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. I don't want to sound negative, but I think every fetus should be shown a film of that incident, maybe projected up on the uterine wall, and then asked if it wants to come out. I am a strong believer in a woman's right to choose, but I also think that in the last trimester, the kid should be given every opportunity to back out.

I think that's why they have so many religious freaks in the airports...they even keep the flowers behind the counter. 'Go, go my children...be fruitful and annoy.

Deep-rooted happiness may require a sense of purpose. If I don't feel that I am in some small way contributing to the greater good, holding on to happiness is like carrying water in my hands.

I fall short of her standards. She made me buy cat food that hasn't been tested on animals. My cats took one bite of it, spit it out, and yelled, "Did no one test this?

Thomas E has already told me that he had to write a tweet for English and that his teacher liked his rough draft. Alley’s

People need each other. Our well-being is tightly tethered to the well-being of people we do not know, most of whom look nothing like ourselves. Happiness, I realized right there in breathing class, requires engagement.

Isn’t that weird? It’s the same with exercise, good nutrition, and a healthful sleep schedule. I think most people know that these are the low-hanging fruits of good mental and physical health. They grease the chute from which happiness may slide.

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.