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• When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting readyto announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small.
  • Didn't Come Here to Argue, "It's a Funny Thing About Me, but Not Very," page 51.

• Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things including bruises, most of them satisfying, depending on the genes and the bank account and where the heart lies.
  My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from. Moreover, I can't give way to the urge to show off my collection to my friends. I can only talk about it, and they needn't listen.
  • I Didn't Come Here to Argue, "The Sunrise Collector: What to Do till Your Horoscope Gets There," page 37.

• When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about—more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.
  • I Didn't Come Here to Argue, "My Feud With Food," page 22.

• There are worse things than being fat, and one of them is worrying about it all the time.
  • But I Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World! by Peg Bracken.

• It isn't surprising that many children consider their parents to be a little dim, and that they sometimes try to update them. The fact that they don't usually try to hard is just as well; a thoroughly updated parent is an unappetizing sight.
  • I Didn't Come Here to Argue, "The Sunrise Collector: Don't Trust Anybody over Fifteen or Talk To Anybody under Forty," page 93.

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• The subject of men and women is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be.