Once, at Thanksgiving, a neighbor wandered in while my cousin Lisa worked on a turkey, shearing meat off its frame and sliding the steaming slices onto a big flowered plate. 'Hey, that's the man's job,' she yelped, in between slurps of her Big Gulp. No one even paused to acknowledge the comment; everyone just laughed and laughed.

One Thanksgiving weekend, I had a lost weekend at a friend's place with 'Grand Theft Auto.'

It's part of the American experience: We deal with mosquitoes in August, airport delays around Thanksgiving, expensive health care and the potential of being shot, at any time, by a semiautomatic weapon as we try to go about the most boring, precious, asinine aspects of our daily lives.

We're getting ready to sit down at the table and have Thanksgiving, and there's people that are not with their families. There are people that are in dangerous areas, putting their lives on the line to keep our country free, and I think that's something we should all celebrate every day.

I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving.

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.

Even if you are vegetarian, you do want to have a stuffing for Thanksgiving. The stuffing is not so much about the vegetables, but it's very unique to the season.

I always love the soapy conflicts between somebody's family of origin and their new family - 'Do I have Thanksgiving at my husband's parents' house, or at my parents' house?'

The more I come to recognize my story's place in God's grander Story, my once-bewildered questions are turning to psalms of thanksgiving at the wonder that I have been included in what He is doing.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year because it reminds us to give thanks and to count our blessings. Suddenly, so many things become so little when we realize how blessed and lucky we are.

I'd love to give my girls a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and all that jazz, but we've raised them to love Tuscan food so much that they don't care for it. My favorite is a nice polenta with beef stew and broccoli rabe on the side.

A week before Thanksgiving, my mother bought the turkey, frozen. Then she froze it some more. Then she let it thaw and cleaned it - and I mean really cleaned it, because nobody wanted a 'dirty bird.' She salt-and-peppered the turkey, buttered, paprika-ed, and nominally stuffed it.

My interactions with my family members are all one-to-one. We don't all get together for Thanksgiving dinner. But I can sit and tell any one of them about a conversation that I just had with the other one, and they're all curious and interested and respectful.

My mother very rarely skipped a Thanksgiving turkey. And yet, none of them ever tasted quite the same, landing somewhere on a sliding scale of succulence. She'd try new methods.

When my family was living in Tokyo, there was a year when we couldn't go back to the States for Thanksgiving, and we went to Seoul. Mandu is a highly satisfying substitute for turkey and trimmings.

I think most people have that crazy uncle they sit at Thanksgiving dinner with: someone they disagree with politically but love them anyway.

We all have somebody that sits down at the Thanksgiving table and says the most outrageous things, and you're doin' the dishes with your sister, and you're like, 'Omigod, can you believe she said that?'

Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.

Thank God for YouTube. Every Thanksgiving, I'm bombarded with 'Turkey Lurkey Time.'

Berries have a lot of soluble fiber. That's why they gel up when you're making your Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, with the pectin.

What I love about Thanksgiving is that it's purely about getting together with friends or family and enjoying food. It's really for everybody, and it doesn't matter where you're from.

I've always had fond memories of cooking Thanksgiving.

There are three things that people pick up on the instant they walk into your home on Thanksgiving. They will be able to feel the human energy. They'll smell the food. And they will see, instantly, the table.

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.'