Such movies are always a danger...falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced...The theme is universal and encourages...unhealthy comparisons...why can't our lives be like that? It's a box left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.

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

When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon. It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security.

I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me.

But I don't distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I'll take either.

Famous people like to choose friends who won't go around repeating their conversations and details about them.

But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.