The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.

In a story, for example, you'll start off with a character who is a little bit of a cartoon. That's not satisfying and you start revising. And as you revise you always are making it better by being specific and by observing more closely, which actually is really the same as saying you love your characters. The close observation equals love of them.

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.

The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.

I say yes to the hot bath and the sandwich - to getting ourselves into the best possible mental shape to identify and then fight the necessary fights from the best possible mind-state: calm, loving, affectionate, precise. Not pushovers but also not zealots. With the idea in mind that "our enemies" are not our enemies; they might seem like that in their present form but that form can morph. We really are large, and really do contain multitudes. But I think it all has to start with a kindly presence of mind, and the aspiration to affection for others.

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).

You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.