
“I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop & talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound.” -Harvey Milk, revolutionary American politician & first openly gay man ever to be elected to public office in the state of California

“Whole worlds have been tamed by men who ate biscuits.” -The truly incomparable Jeff Bridges as the aging, troubled, fading country music star Bad Blake in 2009′s Oscar darling Crazy Heart

“Everyone [in Mexico] is always daring each other to do something stupid. Get on a cow, get on a bull, let’s have a wrestle, eat a worm…..It’s never-ending.” -Round-headed buffoon (and possibly the most un-intentionally funny & un-wittingly brilliant human being alive), Karl Pilkington, after running from homemade fireworks & training to be a luchador in Mexico on Sky1′s brilliant comedy An Idiot Abroad

“Sometimes I think that boy’s cheese done slid right off his cracker!” -Melinda Mickens, shape-shifting deadbeat birth mother of Sam Merlotte, in HBO’s campy, sexy vampire drama True Blood

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” -Albert Camus, 20th century French Algerian writer, revolutionary, absurdist, and Nobel Prize for Literature recipient

“Ribs? Great…..why don’t you just kick the dentures out of my mouth?” -Late American actress Estelle Getty as pint-sized Sicilian pistol Sophia Petrillo on the brilliant 80′s sitcom The Golden Girls

“Eat your spinach, you no good infink. Eat it. EAT IT. Eat it.” -Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye’s spitting image and reluctant, foul-mouthed father

“Making sex is like a Chinese dinner – it ain’t over ’til you both get your cookies.” -The incomparable Alec Baldwin as Old Man Dunphy in the Farrelly Brothers’ 1999 comedy Outside Providence

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.” -Oscar Wilde, 19th century Irish writer, sexually ambiguous lover of beauty, and total brat

“What do you do when the lights are too bright? You dim sum.” -My awesome Daddy, American architect, food/wine nerd, and frequent deliverer of terrible, eye-roll-inducing jokes like this one

“It was a meal that we shall never forget; more accurately, it was several meals that we shall never forget, because it went beyond the gastronomic frontiers of anything we had ever experienced, both in quantity and length. It started with homemade pizza – not one, but three: anchovy, mushroom, and cheese, and it was obligatory to have a slice of each.” -Peter Mayle, British writer and ex-advertising industry drone, in his famous book A Year in Provence

“I like beef jerky and the comedy stylings of Gallagher.” -Orson Welles-esque The Brain (of Pinky & The Brain fame), determined to pass for a country singer in yet another world domination plot

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.” -Henry David Thoreau, American transcendentalist, tree-hugger, political activist, and writer

“You are getting sleepy. You…..are no longer a cat. You are a bagel.” -ALF, wise-guy Melmac ex-pat alien and late-80′s sitcom hero, attempting to hypnotize Lucky, the Tanner’s cat

“Aaah, a marriage made in heaven. A frog and a pig. We can have bouncing baby figs.” -The Muppet Show’s wind-up Robot Kermit, who, unlike real Kermit, openly showed his affection for Miss Piggy

“I know I’m an acquired taste – I’m anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.” -Tori Amos, American pianist, singer, composer, lyrical master, and fellow redhead

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” -John Steinbeck, American novelist and writer of one of my most all-time most favoritest books (I have a lot of those), East of Eden

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.” -George Orwell, brilliant English dystopian writer and socio-political critic

“It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.” -Lemony Snicket, pseudonym and alter-ego of American children’s writer Daniel Handler

“The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings.” -Lewis Carroll, British author, clergyman, mathematician, and photographer, from his classic book Through the Looking Glass

“Being in this band in the early 1980′s made you feel like you were part of a pizza.” -Roger Taylor, drummer of English 80′s superband Duran Duran

“He puts some MacAttack Mac & Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won’t be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook.” -George Saunders, awesome American writer/satirist, from his 2006 short story collection In Persuasion Nation

“If my life were a movie, this is where I would go out for popcorn.” -Charles Schultz, American cartoonist and creator of the Peanuts gang

“If you’ve got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve got 71 cents left; but if you’ve got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve still got seventeen grand. There’s a math lesson for you.” -Steve Martin, American comedian, actor, banjo player, and frequent Saturday Night Live guest