Eggs! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!

Everybody is corrupted by hotel rooms. You can't help it. It's the only place in the world where you walk in and the first think you do is steal everything before you take your coat off.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence.

I dont watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when youre alone and someones voice is coming through their work. Theres a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.