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.

We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

People do what they are told not to do. It happens time and time again. Here on the frozen tundra, it is known as the Tongue on the Frozen Pump Handle principle.

A person does feel sheepish picking on journalists, a class already so richly despised that if a planeload of them crashed in flames, most people would smile from pure reflex.

In Lake Wobegon, we don't forget mistakes.

I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time.