You learn this great lesson of life: it's not about me. It's just not. The matter of talent-which seemed so important to you when you were young-is not of great importance. We're simply a conduit. We take things out of the air into us and put them in the form of stories. That's pretty much it.

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

I remember when I switched from Christmas to sex as the secret of happiness.

Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.

In the end, all solutions are temporary.

The audience is invisible and that's good. Somewhere my voice is drifting through a swine barn and the sound of it seems to perk up the sows' appetite. Or a lady is listening on headphones as she jogs along a beach, running to my cadence. Or a dog sits in front of the radio, head cocked, and the sibilants excite him in some mysterious way. A dog's humorist, that's me.

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.