Quotes & Jokes by Paula Poundstone / page 5

They're not going to teach science at all. What they do is take the science students down to the lake, tie them in burlap sacks, and throw them in. If God thinks they're good science students, they float.

I used to use Shopping for a Better World by the Council on Economic Priorities for my responsible consumer needs. It rates companies with an A, C, or F on their environmental impact, their record on hiring women and minorities, and their willingness to disclose that information to the public. So, for example, there's Chevron with an F in the environment category but a B under minorities and an A under the disclosure heading. It seems to me that if a company is destroying the earth, the fact that they're including minorities in their pillaging and are willing to tell us they're doing it should be little comfort. It's like forgiving an ax murderer who is nice to children.

I'm thankful that my memory is good because my vision is going.

I also like a great Caesar salad with anchovies, although I don't know why some places say 'with anchovies.' If you're making a proper Caesar salad, it's going to have anchovies.

My act is sort of improvisational. I have a skeleton in my head, but no fat or skin on it.

I have jokes I've told before and will tell again, but my favorite part of the night is talking to the crowd.

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.

There are really only so many foods and so many ways you can prepare them.

I can make things, but I don't cook them, exactly. Like salmon, I can stick that in a pan. Or the other day I made noodles, but they were hard. It never occurred to me to check them; I just stopped cooking them when I felt they were ready. Really, I'm too absentminded.

I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.

I have no money. I don’t even have a savings account cause I don’t know my mother’s maiden name and apparently that’s the key to whole thing.

I would imagine the wages of sin are death. But by the time they take taxes out it’s just kind of a tired feeling.

I was born in Alabama but I had only lived there a month before I had done everything that there is to do. Even as an infant I was bored and crawled to the state line.