Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Easter is so disappointing. You suffer all the way through lent, and what do you get for it? A ham.

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 greatness of America is that it produces exuberant geniuses like Louis Armstrong and Fred Astaire and Leonard Bernstein. We are meant to be a jazzy people who talk big and jump on the table and dance; we aren't supposed to be dopey and glum and brood over old injuries.

TV news is as bloody as Shakespeare but without the intelligence and the poetry. If you watch television news you know less about the world than if you drank gin out of a bottle

I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme.

I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York for me is one of those places.