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

He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face.

It makes me wonder sometimes. Remember a couple years ago, when Mexicans went on strike? It was talked about a little bit but not that much. But some old white people, and there aren't even that many, they put bonnets on, and then they control the news.

My family isn't really all that different from anyone else's. Well, maybe they're a bit more entertaining.

For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked from other people's martinis --he hides these things in strange places until they are rotten. And then he eats them.

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.