Quotes By Paula Poundstone

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

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.

I only do two things in my life, and that's take care of my kids and work. Fortunately, these are my favorite things to do, so it works out.

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

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

When we save the rain forest, the polar bear, and Al Gore, we should party so hard that Canada calls the cops on us for noise.

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

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 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.

I love talking to the audience, and I must be the luckiest performer in the world. I always land something or somebody that just takes off.

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

I used to watch 'The Waltons' and sob because my family was nothing like that. We had a cruel sense of humor in my family.

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 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.

President Obama could keep a big map with push pins on it to keep track of how many countries hate us, and when we get down to only half, let's have a ball. I'll blow up the balloons myself.

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

I get the first flight out from anywhere I am because I have to come home to my kids.

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.

I have a horrible memory and I used to consider that a liability, but I've learned along the way that talking to people is really a beautiful thing.

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.

I love key lime pie, although it's never made the proper way.

My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'

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.

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

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

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.

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.

When every high school graduate can spell the word, 'inauguration,' let's put lampshades on our heads and listen to his speeches until Obama's voice gives out.