Vanity might be a "sin" according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life's allowable simple pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days.

...every year for decades there had been great excitement over the Largest Vegetable competition ("That would be my husband", was the standard comment).

People who lack confidence in their judgement lack confidence in themselves

I'm so cool that the kids come to my bedroom and go, 'Mom! Turn the music down!

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.

You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.

The truth is so simple that it is regarded as a pretentious banality.

Memory, in my opinion, is a complete noodle. It hangs on the silliest things but forgets the stuff that really matters.

A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.

Obsession makes my life bad and my work good.

Not everybody is absolutely stupid. Why on earth would I be racist, what would I be trying to achieve?

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.