I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.

Humor is not about problems with airline luggage handlers. It's about our lives in America and it's about the ends of our lives and it's about everything that happens after that and everything that happened before.

Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph's singing is even more precious. This album of classic folk songs is one of his best.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

Honesty is a rare commodity in a palace, and that is why so many fairy-tale marriages end up on the rocks.