None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

I've worn a chainmail suit to swim with sharks, glided over Cirencester with a James Bond-style paramotor strapped to my back, eaten hippo steaks and had a bat dive down my bra. And all the while, I had to face the camera and smile.

I try not to wear anything I have to fidget with - there's nothing worse than wearing something and pulling down the hem and re-adjusting the top. My pet hate is when girls wear those strapless dresses and spend the whole night yanking them up.

Many movies about people recovering, moving on, and redeeming themselves are really wonderful and inspiring. But I think the more sentimental ones that are less good make me feel isolated - like, if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the guys in the movies, there is something wrong with you. That's a shame.

Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

In a wristwatch, imagine the battery is in the strap and there's a medical sensor in there connected to the internet. If someone is monitoring that, they could phone up if the user has forgotten to take some medication. This could save hundreds of dollars in medical fees later. What's missing? It's a stable battery.

The death penalty not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us.

My favorite toy growing up was Polly Pocket. But one gift that I wanted though never received for Christmas was a pair of trampoline moon shoes. You strap them to your feet and they have springs on them, and you can just jump around!

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

Plastic surgery can't make you younger or more beautiful, because beauty is in your eyes, isn't it? It's in your soul; you can't strap it on.

. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice.

"For people never say anything the same way twice; no two of them ever say it the same. The greatest imaginative writer that ever brooded in a lavender robe and a mellowed briar in his teeth, couldn't tell you, though e try for a lifetime, how the simplest strap-hanger will ask the conductor to be let off at the next stop. ...

To pass from understanding less to understanding more by your own intellectual effort in reading is something like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

...cursing my heels and debating whether it was faster to stop and take them off--damn ankle straps!--or keep running with the potential neck breakers. Wouldn't that make a charming epitaph? Here lies Cat. Killed not by fang, but Ferragamos.

I had fun last night," I told Patch, flicking off my chin strap and handing over my helmet. "I'm officially in love with your sheets.

My favorite toy growing up was Polly Pocket. But one gift that I wanted though never received for Christmas was a pair of trampoline moon shoes. You strap them to your feet and they have springs on them and you can just jump around!

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent a teacher an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

I try not to wear anything I have to fidget with - there's nothing worse than wearing something and pulling down the hem and re-adjusting the top. My pet hate is when girls wear those strapless dresses and spend the whole night yanking them up.

Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

In a wristwatch imagine the battery is in the strap and there's a medical sensor in there connected to the internet. If someone is monitoring that they could phone up if the user has forgotten to take some medication. This could save hundreds of dollars in medical fees later. What's missing? It's a stable battery.