What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny.

All of a sudden, when you're exposed to a large audience, they think you just started writing that day, but I started years before. I look back at things I wrote then and I'm so embarrassed - the writing seems so blocky and choppy to me and I wouldn't have wanted success any sooner because the writing was even worse.

I’d always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn’t that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.

As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.

Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

The difference between the first time I read something and the tenth time I read something is generally pretty profound. Even if the script is the same, just the way that I read it is different.

On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind.