I am so good at delayed gratification that I could buy a gross of Twinkies and put them in my pantry, and only take out one to put in my lunch bag once or twice a week, and never binge eat them. And since their expiration date is Dec 2050, they would never go bad in my lifetime.

If a recipe calls for one clove of garlic, then it must be a recipe to cook one clove of garlic, because who would ever use only one clove of garlic? And even so, put in two or three.

This is one of my fundamental philosophies. It applies to so many different situations. It keeps me out of trouble and keeps me from being judgy…

“You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friends’ nose.”

Words to live by. There are other ways to say it, but none so concise.

Never use the words “big” and “but” in the same sentence, even if you want to say “It’s big, but I think I can lift it.”

When I was a kid, I thought my name was GoddammitWilliam.

At every juncture in my life, I have done the best that I knew how to do, with the knowledge that I had at that moment. That is how I give myself permission to not feel bad about the dumb things I have done. It is true for everybody. Why would you ever do less than your best?

Women have an extra tube built into them. It runs from the side of their throat down to the outsides of their thighs, and whenever they eat cake or cookies, that is where they go. My wife told me that was why she didn’t eat that stuff.

If you can work the word “unseemly” into a conversation, people who don’t know you will think that you are smarter and better behaved than you probably are.

Back when I was a boy, during the Pleistocene epoch…

I say that sometimes. Nobody under the age of maybe 50, will have any idea what that means. Other than the Paleolithic diet, I don’t think young people know about the epochs and eras.

Being kind is a powerful way to live

Lima beans were never intended to be eaten. God invented them as an ornamental plant. It is only the perversity of humans that turned them into a… and I use the term loosely… food.

Pink is not just a color, it is much bigger. It says something about you. That is why it is my favorite color. I used to be a rainbow guy, but it got usurped. Well, Barbie kinda usurped pink but I already liked pink before she was invented.

Never put off for tomorrow something that you could do today, because if it is really groovy, you can do it again tomorrow. And if it is not groovy, you never have to think of it again.

My worst character defect is my optimism. It gets me into so much trouble. But it springs forth unbidden every morning upon waking, and I have just had to learn to live with it.

All spiritual philosophies that I have read say basically the same thing. “Here, my reader, are some tricks to live peacefully together in large groups of people.” Even so, they often lead to war.

If your significant other says, “Honey, do you think I have a big butt?” Take out your gun and shoot yourself. It is less painful than answering.

The secret to a good marriage is to never go to bed mad. Even if you have to stay up all night working out the problem. And two people of good heart can work out almost anything. It is very corrosive to wake up angry with someone that you love.

Whenever I find myself pressured about something, and need to give myself permission to get over it, I say to myself… Well, I ain’t dead yet.

One of the most powerful things that you can do with another person is break bread together . I have made many friendships while breaking bread.

The world has become so divisive. Either us or them. We need to have some aliens from another planet land on Earth. It will totally give new meaning to “them”.

When I was 10 or 11, I learned about “Cast your bread upon the waters, and it will return to you multiplied a thousandfold”. 60 years later, I can tell you that it works real good. I have cast a lot of bread, and my life has been magic.

I grew up up north, and eventually I came to my senses, and moved to Texas. Nowadays I sometimes feel like Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians.

Everything in Texas stings, bites, burns, or breaks your heart. I saw that on the bathroom wall at a punk club one night. It seemed true to me.

I could live on love alone, if it wasn’t for the price of gas. – Dale Johnson, 11th grade, 1969 Princeton High School. Gas had just gone up to 39 cents a gallon at the Hudson gas station that had condom machines in the men’s room for a quarter.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It has never failed me. Not one single time. Being ready also means to look up to see the teacher waiting patiently for you to notice, with just what you need. I sometimes forget to do that. It also means keeping an eye out for your student. Sometimes I am one, and sometimes I am the other.

Everything returns to the Great Mother and to the Ten Thousand Things. 

One summer I drove around the country with a cassette tape of Jacob Needleman reading the Tao Te Ching. I wanted to see what wisdom I could pick up from it. It stayed in my cassette player in my truck, and I played it every day when I drove, for about 4 months. I heard the whole thing maybe 30 or 40 times. I got to where I could recite some of it with him as he read it. Finally I got to where I could figure out what the words meant, and it gave me great succor. I have done that with the Bible too. There is wonderful wisdom in there but it is so violent and obfuscatory that it is hard to get to.

When I die, and they send me down to Hell, I wanna ask Satan if he will put me in the room above the engineers who invented that hard plastic packaging that you have to use a hatchet or a chainsaw to open, and let me pee on their heads for eternity.

I can’t dance, I can’t draw freehand, I can’t paint a picture, I can’t have a baby, and I can’t do algebra, but I can make anything out of wood. I can purely build the heck out of something.