Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.

I think if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world for all of us.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

No matter what time of year I come here, people always say the same thing: Its not usually like this.

Don't tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.

For me, the monologue was the favorite thing I had done in radio. It was based on writing, but in the end it was radio, it was standing up and leaning forward into the dark and talking, letting words come out of you.

The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.