“I’m a pirate. We don’t use patience, because we’re tough and boozy.”
- When told to be patient
“No. Not yet.”
- Pretending to be a doctor, when asked if Daddy’s tummy was OK
“Mommy, put baby George back in his cage.”
- On newborn care “Dad, you smell like G-Daddy (his grandfather). Half sweaty, half cookies.”
- On personal odors “Chimpanzees have a lot of things people have- they have muscles and fingers and hair and teeth and eyes and babies. But you know what they don’t have? Suitcases.”
- On Anthropology “The British are making me so sleepy.”
- Henry, found asleep on the floor next to a globe
“Food goes from your esophagus to your small intestines. Then, it turns into poops and peeps.”
- On the workings of the digestive system
“This is going to be cool. Star Wars cool.”
- On coolness standards “Hey dad, why don’t you trade that ‘or’ for an ‘and’?”
- When offered a choice between having a cookie now OR having one later
“This is as yummy as a bush is to a skunk!”
- On the deliciousness of mac & cheese
“A lot of things happened back when it was all just dinosaurs and naked people.”
- On prehistory “Let’s go by grandmama’s house, so I can see what I want.”
- On getting stuff “As you grow, the brain gets bigger and bigger and smarter and smarter. And I have the smartest brain of all.”
- On brain development, and modesty “You know….dinosaurs, fish, monsters, ninjas….Wait- Did I say ‘sharks’?”
- On Christmas Wishes
“I love you all the way to Pluto and then to Saturn and back to earth and to Antarctica and then to Australia to a man who says G’Daaaaay Maaaate and then home.”
- Describing the depths of his love “Daddy- why do you ALWAYS not know Korean?”
- On his frustration that I can’t read him his cousin’s Korean-language piano book “When you are one year old, you only have one brain, but when you are two, you have two brains. I have three and three quarters brains.”
- On the topic of intelligence “I wish I lived in Somalia, so I could do whatever I want.”
- After learning that Somalia is “lawless” “I know what to do. I think we should call the police.”
- On how his teacher should handle a classmate who had just bitten him
“You mean on the high voltage transmission lines?”
- When asked “Do you see the birds on that wire up there?” “You can’t just kick somebody. First, you have to say ‘Please, may I kick your body?'”
- On the polite way to go about kicking somebody “Earwax tastes awful, but boogers are deeeee-licious.”
- On matters of taste “Daddy, I have a button and it makes a pipe come down from the roof and suck you up. But I will only push it if you do not give me Mac and Cheese.”
- Learning the finer points of extortion “How come nobody knows what things are called in Chinese?”
- After unsuccessfully asking 3 different people if they knew how to say ‘rainbow’ in Chinese. (It’s ‘jiàng’) “I wish homeless people were snails, so that when it rains, they could go in their shells.”
- On social issues “It’s good to have a bike with pedals, because when there’s doo-doo, you just pedal right through it.”
- On cycling “There are two things I think are so stupid: making bad choices and throwing up.”
- On what to avoid “#1 means pee-pee. #2 means poop. #3 means all mixed up.”
- On euphemisms “Mommy, you have your truth, and I have my truth.”
- On the subjective nature of truth, after being caught in a bold-faced lie “If you’re looking for me, I’ll be wherever I am.”
- On how to find him “At the end of time, everything – even baby George – will be made out of metal.”
- On the future