All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

All of this strife on the political front might just be the death throes of another set of [less-honorable] American beliefs, that have, at their core, the notion that equality is something the privileged group "gives" to those not so privileged - a reaching down, as it were.

I'm a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psycho­logical apparatus of Americans.

Whatever happens, we can deal with it if we admit that it's happening and so on. So to be comfortable with what is - that is a real superpower.

It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.

If you understand writing as primarily engaging an imaginary reader, well, you've kind of been doing that your whole life. You walk into a room and you're engaging with imaginary strangers because you don't actually know who they are. For me, it was really empowering to say: this is a branch of entertainment and communication and engagement, as opposed to jumping over some perceived literary high bar. That was the buzzkill.