Top 70 Paula Poundstone Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community.”

— Paula Poundstone

2. “Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.”

— Paula Poundstone

3. “I think we need a 12-step group for non-stop talkers. We’re going to call it On and On Anon.”

— Paula Poundstone

4. “The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”

— Paula Poundstone

5. “I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name.”

— Paula Poundstone

6. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

7. “I don’t believe for a second that weightlifting is a sport. They pick up a heavy thing and put it down again. To me, that’s indecision.”

— Paula Poundstone

8. “I made mistakes and I broke the law and I’m more than willing to pay a price for that. But there’s a price beyond that that my children have paid, and that’s not what was supposed to happen.”

— Paula Poundstone

9. “I have terrible short-term memory loss, which I like to think of as Presidential eligibility.”

— Paula Poundstone

10. “I love key lime pie, although it’s never made the proper way.”

— Paula Poundstone

11. “Thomas E has already told me that he had to write a tweet for English and that his teacher liked his rough draft. Alley’s.”

— Paula Poundstone

12. “I happen to be a devout atheist. I don’t believe in God. I still go to church – I’m not a heathen. I go to an atheist church. We have crippled guys who stand up and testify that they were crippled, and they still are.”

— Paula Poundstone

13. “My mom is one of those really angry moms who gets mad at absolutely everything. Once when I was a little kid, I accidentally knocked a Flintstones glass off the kitchen table. She said, ‘Well, dammit, we can’t have nice things.’”

— Paula Poundstone

14. “What moron said that knowledge is power? Knowledge is power only if it doesn’t depress you so much that it leaves you in an immobile heap at the end of your bed.”

— Paula Poundstone

15. “My parents got carried away with the letter P when they were naming the kids in our family. There’s me, Paula, my sisters Peggy and Patty, and my brother Pjimmy, spelled with a silent P.”

— Paula Poundstone

16. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

17. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

18. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

19. “I got my dog three years ago because I was drunk in a pet store. We had nine cats at the time. The cats started hiding the alcohol after that.”

— Paula Poundstone

20. “I’m the only person I know of who’s ever been pulled over for attempted speeding.”

— Paula Poundstone

21. “The pleasure of the mulch pile is incomprehensible. I wouldn’t care if they just hauled the mulch to the landfill somewhere. Obviously, grass clippings are biodegradable, but when they’re bunched together at the landfill, they become badly influenced by other garbage.”

— Paula Poundstone

22. “I’ll probably never have children because I don’t believe in touching people for any reason.”

— Paula Poundstone

23. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

24. “Can you remember when you didn’t want to sleep? Isn’t it inconceivable? I guess the definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep.”

— Paula Poundstone

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

— Paula Poundstone

26. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

27. “Speaking of happy successes, after years of struggling to lose those few extra pounds every mother puts on during adoption, particularly when the doctor orders bed rest, in 2004 I sent my assistant to the Gap in dark glasses with a fake ID to purchase my first pair of Easy Fit jeans.”

— Paula Poundstone

28. “Deep-rooted happiness may require a sense of purpose. If I don’t feel that I am in some small way contributing to the greater good, holding on to happiness is like carrying water in my hands.”

— Paula Poundstone

29. “I’ve decided that perhaps I’m bulimic and just keep forgetting to purge.”

— Paula Poundstone

30. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

31. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

32. “I like to work on New Year’s Eve. It has a nice spirit; a nice feel about it. If you are all about the ‘year-end’ thing at all, then laughing with fellow human beings is a great way to start the new year.”

— Paula Poundstone

33. “The definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep.”

— Paula Poundstone

34. “I used to work at The International House of Pancakes. It was a dream, and I made it happen.”

— Paula Poundstone

35. “It is the best part of the night. The classic interactive lines are ‘Where are you from? What do you do for a living?’ I almost always get something interesting.”

— Paula Poundstone

36. “The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer.”

— Paula Poundstone

37. “I’m thankful for the three ounce Ziploc bag, so that I have somewhere to put my savings.”

— Paula Poundstone

38. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

39. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

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

— Paula Poundstone

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

— Paula Poundstone

42. “I confess that when I first read that smog is particularly hazardous to children, senior citizens, and physically active people, for a brief moment I thought, I’m in the clear for at least ten years.”

— Paula Poundstone

43. “It is my wish to die of unique causes, perhaps in a high-speed tricycle crash, a bizarre stapling incient, or as a result of inadvertently sucking my brains out through my ear while trying to untwist the vacuum hose.”

— Paula Poundstone

44. “The position of First Lady has no rules, just precedent, so its evolution has been at a virtual standstill for years. If Martha Washington didn’t do it, then no one is sure it should be done.”

— Paula Poundstone

45. “I was court-ordered to Alcoholics Anonymous on television. Pretty much blows the hell out of the second A, wouldn’t you say?”

— Paula Poundstone

46. “Remember when you were considered an environmentalist when you didn’t throw junk out the car window? I sure do miss that simpler, happier time.”

— Paula Poundstone

47. “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.’”

— Paula Poundstone

48. “I also like a great Caesar salad with anchovies, although I don’t know why some places say ‘with anchovies.’ If you’re making a proper Caesar salad, it’s going to have anchovies.”

— Paula Poundstone

49. “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.”

— Paula Poundstone

50. “People need each other. Our well-being is tightly tethered to the well-being of people we do not know, most of whom look nothing like ourselves. Happiness, I realized right there in breathing class, requires engagement.”

— Paula Poundstone