I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.

Silence on the radio ... I don't know how that works.

The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

When his daughter puts her arm over his shoulders and says,'Daddy , I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.

Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome.

Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world -- like grace -- and shines on everybody.

I hiked around town, the air sweet and dry, and was sort of overwhelmed by the perfection of it -- the old courthouse, the train depot, Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel rising up, the neon bars, the funky festivity of a college town .

I never was one to get upset about a few scratches on a motor vehicle, it is meant to be used, not saved.

The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life.

It is more worthy in the eyes of God ... if a writer makes three pages sharp and funny about the lives of geese than to make three hundred fat and flabby about God or the American people.

To choose Norm Coleman over Walter Mondale is like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm and we all go through it together.