Old Age, Piece Of Cake

"You know you're getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It's like, 'See if you can blow this out.' The other thing I'm not looking forward to is when they have to help you with the blow. You know those birthday parties when everyone gathers around behind the old person and blows with them? It's sad because the poeple don't know that they're being helped. They think, 'Hey look, I'm blowing all these candles out. And I'm just inhaling. I'm in good shape. I'm going to live a lot longer." - Jerry Seinfeld

Family Picture (Window)

"I am not much for the family gathering. You ever sit there and the conversation's so boring, so dull, you start to fantasize, 'What if I just got up and jumped out that window?' Just crashed right through it. Come back in, there's broken glass, everybody's all upset. 'No, no, I'm all right, I was just a little bored there, I'm fine now, I'm ready to hear a little more about that Hummel collection, Aunt Rose. Let's pick it up right there.'" - Jerry Seinfeld

The World According To Gym

"Gym class was another little brush with fascism. You line up in your squads, and you better be wearing your little gym suits. If you are not wearing the gym suit, you are not taking gym class. 'Remember, kids, exercise has no effect unless you're wearing these special suits.'

A gym teacher is a strange occupational choice. What is this job? You're walking around in shorts with a whistle all day long. You've got an office next to a shower, you're torturing and humiliating young boys all day. It's weird.

Any day that you had gym was a weird school day. It started off kind of normal. You had English, Geometry, Social Studies, and then suddenly you're in Lord of the Flies for forty minutes. You're hanging from a rope, you have hardly any clothes on. Teachers are yelling at you, 'Where's your jockstrap?!' Kids are throwing dodge balls at you, snapping towels - you're trying to survive. And then it's History, Science, Language.

There's something off in the whole flow of that day."

All-Time Chimp

"I really looked up to monkeys as a kid. Monkeys have contributed a lot to society in their way. They were the first astronauts in the Sixties. Which I'm sure made perfect sense in the monkey brain. 'I see, so instead of the little bellhop uniform, you want me to get into a rocket and orbit the earth at supersonic speed. Yeah, I think that is the next logical step for me. Because, I been working with the Italian guy and the crank organ and I feel I'm ready to handle the maximum re-entry G-forces.'" - Jerry Seinfeld

Cookie Momster

"But I have to say I enjoy adulthood. In enjoy the fact that now, if I want a cookie, I have a cookie. Okay? I have three cookies or four cookies or eleven cookies if I want. What was the big deal with the cookies? 'Not before dinner.' 'Not too many.' 'You've had enough.' 'Not now.' Well, now I'm a grown-up, give me the cookies! many times I will intentionally ruin my entire appetite. Beyond recognition. Then I call my mother up right after it to tell her. 'Hello, Mom? I just ruined my entire appetite... cookies.' So what if I ruin it? See, as adults we understand, even if you ruin an appetite, there's another appetite coming right behind it. I see no danger in running out of appetites." - Jerry Seinfeld

Cereal Killer?

"I hated those little snack-pack cereals. Still do. Don't like portion control.

And on the side they would explain how to cut along the perforated lines and pour the milk right into the box.

What was the point of this? Pretending that your parents couldn't afford a bowl?"

- Jerry Seinfeld

Baby Talk

"Everyone gets excited about a baby. Except the baby. It's no fun being a baby.

They don't know they're going to grow. They're born, they look down, they think, 'Well, this is it. This is the body I've got. Tiny hands, giant head, bad plumbing. Where am I going to find a tie three inches long?'

And at 6 months old they immediately put you in charge of complicated toys you have no idea how to operate." -- Jerry Seinfeld

The Police Lock

"For a while, I had this thing in my apartment called a police lock. It was actually like a 4' long bar that set into the floor and braced against the door. The idea behind it is once the burglar breaks into your house, this gives him something to beat you with. So they don't waste time looking around for a bust of Beethoven or something. You're done sooner, he's home earlier. It works out best for everybody." - Jerry Seinfeld

Library Of Weakness

"What's amazing to me about the library is that here's a place where you can go in, you take out any book you want, they just give it to you and say 'Please just bring it back when you're done.' It reminds me of this pathetic friend everybody had when they were a little kid that would let you borrow any of his stuff if you would just be his friend. That's what the library is, it's a government-funded pathetic friend. That's why everybody kind of bullies the library, 'Maybe I'll bring it back on time, maybe I'll bring it back late. What are you gonna do, charge me a nickel? Oooh, I'm so scared.'" - Jerry Seinfeld

Knifes Job, There

"Every mall has a cutlery store in it. I'm sorry, but this has got to be kind of a scary place to work. They put like a 16-year old girl behind the counter, and all day people are coming in saying things like, 'I need knives. I need more knives. Do you have any bigger knives? I need a big, long, sharp knife. That's what I'm in the market for. I like them really sharp. Do you have one with hooks and ridges on the blade? That's the kind of knife I'm looking for. I need one I can throw, and I need another one I can just hack away with. Do you have anything like that?'" - Seinfeld

Revolving Stores

"You know there's always one store location in your neighborhood that's constantly changing hands. Everybody has one of these in their neighborhood. It's a leather store, it's a yogurt shop, it's a pet supply. It's constantly changing. Nobody can do business there. It's like some sort of Bermude Triangle of retail. Stores open up and then they just disappear without a trace. Nobody knows what happened to them. I guess eventually when aliens land from the mother ship like in Close Encounters, the bottom will slowly open and all these store owners will come wandering out in a daze going, 'I thought there was going to be more walk-in traffic, didn't you? Nobody even looked in the windows.'" -- Seinfeld

Those Welty Millionaires

"Professional football. To me the hardest part of being a professional football player is on the one hand you're a millionaire on the other they blow a whistle and you have to run around after a football. To me the whole idea of being a millionaire is somebody throws a football at me. Maybe I catch it, maybe I don't. I would think you get someone to hand you the football at that point. 'Here you go, sir, that's another touchdown for you. Would you like a fresh-squeezed orange juice before the next play?'" -- Jerry Seinfeld

A Punch Of Fun

"I love to go to sports events. Love, love, love sports. Anybody running around in an outfit with a stripe on it, I want to watch them do it.

Take boxing, the simplest, stupidest sport of all. It's almost as if these two guys are just desperate to compete with each other, but they couldn't think of a sport. So they said, 'Why don't we just pound each other for forty-five minutes? Maybe someone will come watch that.'" -- Jerry Seinfeld

Miss Conduct?

"I've never really understood the importance of the orchestra conductor. I mean between you and me, what the hell is this guy doing? Do you really need somebody waving a stick in your place to play the violin? Does that really help you out? I could see how we need him at the beginning, okay? Tap, tap, tap, 'ready and everyone start.' But once it's all going, what's he doing then? I don't see the cellist looking around and going, 'I'm confused, I don't know what to do. I'm lost.' And the conductor waves the stick at him, 'Do this, like this, like this,' and he's, 'Oh, okay, thank you, thank you very much. Now I've got it.'" -- Jerry Seinfeld

What's The Word For "Precious Little Way To Die"?

"Electrocute. There's another word that's kind of strange when you break it down. Electro-cute. What's cute about it? 'Would you mind putting on this cute little metal hat for me? This is going to be just the sweetest 50,000 volts you ever felt.' Electro-cute. It's like, 'Oh no, we're not going to hang you. We're just going to do this little thing we call rope-dee-doo.'" -- Jerry Seinfeld

When You Care Enough To Send... Nothing

"The clearest indication of the complexity of modern relationships is that greeting card companies are forced to put out cards that are blank on the inside. Nothing... no message. It's like the card companies say, 'We give up, you think of something. For seventy-five cents it's not worth us getting involved.'" -- Jerry Seinfeld

Here's The Hang-Up

"I love my phone machine. I wish I was a phone machine. I wish if I saw somebody on the street I didn't want to talk to I could just go, 'Excuse me, I'm not here right now. If you could just leave a message, I could walk away.' I also have a cordless phone. You get mad at somebody on a real phone, 'You can't talk to me like that!' BANG, it's over. But a cordless phone - 'You can't talk to me like that! All right now, let me just find that little thing to turn this off... Just hang on, I'm hanging up on you.'" -- Seinfeld

Magic Ratchet Set

"A man is paralyzed mentally by a beautiful woman, and advertisers really take advantage of this. Don't you love those ads where you see the woman in the bikini next to the 32-piece ratchet set? And we'll be looking at the girl in the bikini, then looking at the ratchet set, going, "All right, well if she's right next to the ratchet set, and I had that ratchet set... I wonder if that would mean that... I better just buy the ratchet set." -- Seinfeld

Dead Rest

"The proof that we don't understand death is we give dead people a pillow. I mean if you can't stretch out and get some solid rest at that point, I don't think there are any bedding accessories that can make a difference. But the suit and the pillow really shows we have no idea what to get these people ready for. I mean, what situation are you going into with a suit and a pillow? There's no business nap meetings." -- Jerry Seinfeld

Under the Leather

"I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Now why does moisture ruin leather? Aren't cows outside a lot of the time? When it's raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, 'Let us in! We're all wearing leather! Open the door! We're going to ruin the whole outfit here!'" -- Jerry Seinfeld