When I was ten, I wrote an essay on what I would be when I grew up and said I would be a professional soccer player and a comedian in off season.

When I was a kid, 'Land of the Lost' was my favorite show, just because it was - in the landscape of Saturday morning cartoons - it was so unique. It was a live-action show and kids were in it, these creatures, these Sleestaks and dinosaurs. Every week was a different adventure. I couldn't wait. I loved it so much.

By the time I was ready for college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.

One of my first memories of being a kid was, 'I want to have a real job when I grow up.' And to me that meant you wear a suit and a hat and carry a briefcase and go to your job.

Oh, I love critics. Because they love me. It's not a joke. They care.

It was - I'm very didactic in my lyrics, but I've always been drawn to mock my own emotions, and so I write this very lyric-heavy stuff, which suits theater and comedy much more than it suits pop.

For most human beings, if what they want happens, it is a success. If what they could not have imagined happens, it is luck. If what nobody could foresee happens, it is a miraculous existence.

Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.