Quotes from Celia Rivenbark

Ever since they invented Hello Kitty, the world hasn't been the same. You can safely chart the rise of The Culture of Cute since that flat-faced skank started showing up everywhere.

I had to start watching [ The Real Housewives of New Jersey ] every week because, well, my IQ was just too high. I mean seriously up there. What can I tell you? After watching every episode, I am now officially as dumb as that brown, particle-like stuff you find outside and don't want to track inside the house. Rhymes with "wirt", I think.

When I opened the last [401k] statement, I jumped out of the window. True, it was the kitchen window and I only fell two feet, so the whole scene lacked drama, but I thought that was the required reaction to extreme financial turmoil in America. And I am nothing if not patriotic.

If you buy an SUV, you're buying your safety at the expense of someone else's." ... If you're driving a Hyundai, which basically runs on air and tofu, and you get in an accident with an SUV, are you going to say, "Well, at least I have the courage of my convictions?" Hell, no. You're going to say: "Soon's I get outta this hospital bed and find my legs, I'm gonna get me a Suburban. Loaded.

Never invite someone who is speaking a foreign language in your presence to "Go back to your country." The only time that phrase is every acceptable is if you are British and you are speaking to Madonna.

Why clone cats when there's perfectly good Russell Crowe lying around?

A friend confided to me recently that she wasn't sure if it was the 'change,' plain old PMS, or just a slow shift toward embracing her inner witch that is causing her to become progressively more irritated by everything her husband does.

While it may seem a bit antithetical to use quite so many "naughty words" in an etiquette book, I can assure you that I would never use curse words for shock value alone or to prop up a needy joke. We live in a world in which one Real Housewife of New Jersey seriously admonished another to "show some fuckin' class!" Enough said.

To the newcomer to the south, hearing that a coworker plans a weekend visit to 'mama and them's' (the correct plural possessive, don'tchaknow), might make him think that mama has been left alone either throught an act of scoundreldom involving the town's resident hoochie-mama (an altogether different kind of mama) or Daddy's untimely demise.

You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning.

Proper driving etiquette demands that you basically get close enough to a car in front of you at a busy intersection that it would mean that in certain third-world countries, or South Carolina, you would have to get married.

As far as I can tell, the biggest side effect of a gluten sensitivity is that you actually become the number one symptom: a huge pain in the ass.

Of course, I know that turtles aren't mammals. They are ambivalents, which can live on air or underwater and write with their right or left flippers. They also almost never vote.

Blaine, on the other hand, just doesn't seem that reliable. He's the type who would cheat on Barbie with one of those Bratz sluts and then lie about it in the morning, even as Barbie discovered the creepy telltale amputeed boot in Blaine's sofa cushions.

We are, like our beloved garden greens, sturdy, strong, and best when tested by the elements and fully seasoned.

Will I stop describing, as only a true Southerner can, a truly awful physical appearance as simply "most unfortunate" as in, "She has a most unfortunate nose"?

If you're having a party, don't forget the Erik Estrada gourmet chips. Did you say "Erik who?" Tsk-tsk. How could you forget his dramatic stylings as a motorcycle cop in CHiPs? Get it now? The chips have the bitter aftertaste of fleeting fame and broken dreams.

I wanted to kill her with my bare hands but it wouldn't have been Christian.