I like high school and college writing textbooks and find them very helpful. Whenever I'm stuck and seem to have no ideas, I open one up and turn to the back. There I'll find questions like, "Have you had any experiences with an alcoholic or a sailor?"

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. "That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.

Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

I was first published in the newspaper put out by School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a student. I wince to read that story nowadays, but I published it with an odd photo I'd found in a junk shop, and at least I still like the picture. I had a few things in the school paper, and then I got published in a small literary magazine. I hoped I would one day get published in The New Yorker, but I never allowed myself to actually believe it. Getting published is one of those things that feels just as good as you'd hoped it would.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.