When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

That's what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they'll fit right in your pocket.

Let us create the tsunami of love to flatten the world with joy.

I thought you said you didn't want this to happen, " she whispered, still dizzy from his kiss. "That there was too much at stake." "You're a hard woman to resist, Yasmin Katsalos...

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.

History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.

Today's gasoline prices are taking a severe toll on Americans' pocketbooks. Consumers are anxious.

I don't know who Ozzy is. I wake up a new person every day.

He shook his head in mock sympathy. "I tell you, Sage. Sometimes I think I am the one who needs to take out the restraining order on you.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.