As much as I liked acting for its playfulness and the reward of hearing big laughs wash over you on a stage, I always felt I should do something that I could control.

I've always had that overweening desire to be liked by the audience.

Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.

I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.

You can't not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you're on.

The child says, "Well geesh, the institutions that I'm supposed to respect - the church and the government - they're telling me things that don't appear to be true. Either I'm crazy or they're crazy." That creates the Absurd Child. The Absurd Child is one who says, "Well, I think they're crazy." So you live in this state of alienation from your culture and your society and your family because you see this rampant bullshit around you.