My dad has a dry, deadpan sense of humor, and my mom has an unexpected, wacky take on things. They really encouraged laughing at ourselves and the weirdness of situations that come up growing up in politics.

You think about D.C. as a boring stuffy place. That's kind of its image. But if you grow up in that, you see all these energetic, fun people and crazy stuff that happens behind the scenes that no one knows about.

When my father became vice president, I was a sophomore in high school. I'd do things like go on a run with my soccer team and purposely dodge the security van. Then my parents compromised with the Secret Service when I went to college. I just had a panic button in my dorm room, so if I pressed that, they'd be there within 2 or 3 minutes.

I was one of those dorky kids who'd wanted to go to Harvard since the fifth grade.

The commitment to literacy was constant on the part of African Americans. And the percentages of literacy by the end of the century, by 1900, basic literacy has galloped ahead. People believed that education, of course, was the turnstile for advancement.

I was studying with Stella Adler, who was a great, great teacher who encouraged me to be an actor. I had thought I would just write or direct or whatever. I wasn't thinking very much of Hollywood. I was thinking only of the legitimate theatre. But then I changed.

The experience of the race shows that we get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else.

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.