Performance is really an important part of how I edit. I sometimes take something out because I realize I put in a joke just to be funny and the audience laughed, but I should be ashamed of myself. I sometimes take out sentences, which are perfectly fine on paper, just because they don't flow when I say them out loud. I always read my work out loud now.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

You need to give the reader a reason to turn the page. In a diary, you are just yourself. You aren't trying to entertain. You aren't trying to get anyone to turn the page. I have over one hundred and fifty six volumes of my diary and I guarantee you that if you read them, you'd stop and never come back.

There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

I wanted to be a visual artist, but I realized I was more affected by what I read than by what I saw. I would go to a show at a museum and look at a painting and say, 'Oh I wish I owned that,' and that would be the end of my relationship with a painting. With a short story I would read or with an author I would discover I could be haunted. It would affect my mood and affect the way that I saw the world. I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be able to do that.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

Most people, or at least most of the people that I've come into contact with, would like to be written about.