I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.

Cursing dads are terrifying, you know? Cursing dads are - I don't know why, but no. It just doesn't seem to me that that would be funny. I mean it might be - you could try it and see. I suppose anybody just losing it and sputtering curses is pretty funny. But I think it would be more of a challenge, much more of a challenge, to make a cursing dad funny.

Words are charms. It's like a song you didn't even know you knew.

Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.

Human connection is the way things work. It's like a patronage system. You know somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows the district governor, and it's okay.

There's an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it's really a heroic place.

A book tour is not a good opportunity to let your mind wander. You have to pay attention, remember salespeople's and interviewers' names, succinctly summarize your book in a 'selling' way, and so on.