Paula Poundstone

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

“I'm thankful for Sarah Palin's vice presidential bid, which taught us that Alaska is not in a box off the coast of California.”

“When we live up to our Constitution, let's form a Conga line around the Capitol and bungee jump off the dome.”

“I'm really more prolific than most stand-ups. My act changes. I do fold in new experiences, new observations, whatever you want to call it.”

“I was born in Alabama, but I only lived there for a month before I'd done everything there was to do.”

“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 don't have a bank account because I don't know my mother's maiden name.”

“I did auditions at a club called the Comedy Connection. They wanted nothing to do with me. But one night they were doing a night of all women comics, and they invited me to do that.”

“I don't need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled.”

“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.”

“I was diagnosed a number of years ago with obsessive-compulsive disorder - which everyone has, to some degree - and I have this really annoying trait where in conversation, I always steer it back to something that happened to me.”

“I have a very silly sense of humor. I've never laughed harder in my entire life than seeing someone with toilet paper stuck on the bottom of their shoe.”

“The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer.”

“I talk to a lot of librarians, and there's always a steady drumbeat of how libraries are places of community. But a lot of them have also recently - and just in the nick of time - refurbished, because during this economic downturn, people have a tendency to borrow instead of buy.”

“How do you come back? It's one step at a time. I'm optimistic because I don't know what else to be.”

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

“When I sat down to write I just felt like a geek writing about myself. And then it dawned on me, just because of the way I am, I can't stop talking, and part of the problem is that anything that gets said reminds me of something that happened to me one time, and invariably I cut people off and talk about myself.”

“I mean, I do love clever and witty, but I think that the 'Three Stooges' were geniuses. They'd have to be for their appeal to have lasted this long.”

“Once I was gone for a month and I was just miserable, so I flew back from Florida for two hours just to be home and see my cats.”