“Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable.”

“Wisdom cannot prevent a fall, but may cushion it.”

“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”

“The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg.”

“Not being the sort to throw a book, she pounded her fist on her cushion.”

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.”

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

“Do I look like the kind of person who wastes time turning goats into pin cushions?”

“He used to wear a little blond moustache but Mother made him cut it off. She said -'
'Don't tell me. The minister needed it to stuff a cushion.”

“You sound disappointed.” Shane’s voice came out faint and thready, and he put his head back against the cushions as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn, I hate this. I really do.”


I know,” Oliver said. “Your blood reeks of it.”