We'll take the cake with the red cherry on top.

I wanted to be the next Dana Carvey. This was my ultimate goal. If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.'

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.

My interests were more extracurricular, more external, and more social than they were academic. My birthday is also in December, so I was one of the older kids. That meant I learned social leadership early on. I was always just much better in a team and work environment than I was in a classroom environment.

All my grandchildren bake. On a Saturday, Annabel's boys, Louis and Toby, always bake. Louis makes a chocolate cake, Toby makes banana or lemon drizzle. They're 12 and 10, and they can do it totally on their own. My son's twin girls, Abby and Grace, are 14; they make birthday cakes and like to do it on their own with Mum out of the way.

Did you know you're supposed to soap and scrub for as long as it takes to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice?

I'm not materialistic. I believe in presents from the heart, like a drawing that a child does.

My life is better with every year of living it.

Fourth of July. My birthday is July first, and my best friend's birthday is July fifth, so it's always been a favorite holiday. It's all about having a cooler full of sodas, hot dogs, and just hanging out and shooting off firecrackers, being low-key, watching the fireworks.

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.

My mom kicked me out a couple of weeks before my 18th birthday. I had a job for about six, seven months at a supermarket, and they fired me for being late.

I don't go to celebrity parties a lot. I don't really enjoy them because I really like going for it in parties. And sometimes at celebrity parties, there is no dancing on tables because people... it can be a little judgmental at times. So I tend not to go unless it is Taylor Swift's birthday party; then it's amazing.

At my age flowers scare me.

On every birthday, I ask my wife, 'What would you like this year?' and her instant reply is, 'Diamonds! Diamonds! Diamonds!' I'm always living in hope that one day she'll say she just wants me!

If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

I've never hosted a party in my life, not even my own birthday party. I'd feel really uncomfortable saying, 'Hey everybody, let's celebrate me!' But I'm not antisocial. I don't hate people.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.

I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.

You should feel good about making your home nicer for your family and your friends. You should feel great about cooking a good dinner and making a dress for a granddaughter, creating a beautiful birthday party. It's all part of life.

A gift, with a kind countenance, is a double present.

If I have the power to post 'Happy Birthday' on someone's Facebook page and make them feel really good, it feels really good to make other people feel really good. I love it. I'm a huge Facebook and Twitter person. And I love talking to my fans. It's fun.

I wear jewellery that I never take off. I have a ring and two necklaces. I always have them on and get scared when I have to take them off for photo shoots. The ring is my mum's mum's mum's, and she gave it to me for my 18th birthday. The necklace is the same one that my sister has. She's called Hannah, and the name is the chain.

As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of 'easy believism.' There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.

The American flag is an enduring symbol of liberty, democracy, and justice. It is fitting that the House act to protect it as we approach our nation's birthday, and as our men and women in uniform rally behind it in Iraq's battlefields.

Birthday Alarm was a very simple site based on being reminded of your friends' birthdays.

As I approached my 18th birthday and prepared to enter military service in World War II, I was recommended to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

With my wife I don't get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to 'the best woman a man ever had.' The waiter joined me.

For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.

I remember one summer I played, like, with the granddaughter of this known Klan member. Like, all summer we caught cicadas. And we had grown close, and so it was, like, time for her birthday party and I said 'Oh, like, what time do I come for your party?' And she's like 'Oh, no, you can't come to my house 'cause my parents don't like black people.'

It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You'll have a nice time, then two years later you'll be like, 'There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?'

A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of.

Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter.

I worked at an ice cream parlor called Chadwicks. We wore old-timey outfits and had to bang a drum, play a kazoo, and sing 'Happy Birthday' to people while giving them free birthday sundaes. Lots of ice cream scooping and $1 tips.

I had a birthday party with my family and friends at a house, and Chipotle catered. It was beautiful.

With a recent birthday, I've been acting now for twenty years.

I can put my legs behind my head and sing 'Happy Birthday.' Because that's something that me and my friends used to do when we were in gymnastics class as kids, and I can still do it. I was doing it since I was 8 and 9. They used to call me Gumby. Very bendy.

I'm not going to be caught around here for any fool celebration. To hell with birthdays!

I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.

The thrill of performing - that's something that hasn't changed for me. That simultaneous joy of creating something and sharing it with an audience - it's the same now as it was then, when it was just my cousins' birthday party.

When someone asks if you'd like cake or pie, why not say you want cake and pie?

You know, maybe I was just born in the wrong time, but I love all things romantic. Puffy understands that. For my last birthday, he covered my hotel room floor with rose petals and had flowers and candles all over the room.

I have been a frequent air traveler since I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, when my parents packed me off to boarding school two plane rides away from home. Those days of being willingly handed from air hostess to air hostess as an 'unaccompanied minor' made me blase about the rigors of air travel.

My mom and my father's birthday are on the same day.

If every year is a marble, how many marbles do you have left? How many sunrises, how many opportunities to rise to the full stature of your being?

I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.