Generally speaking, I, like anyone else who does anything publicly, like it when people like what I do, and would like to hear as much.

The only time I've ever been mistaken for someone else is - and this arguable still - when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, "You look a lot like that guy from computer ads" and I said, "There is a reason because I am that guy," and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, "That's a funny joke, but you really do look like him." He thought I was not me.

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

Terry Gross. I would rush home from high school to listen to Terry Gross.

I used to enjoy the anonymity of being a literary figure and occasionally a public radio figure.

Once you're out in a place where there's one sheriff for the county, people have to learn how to get along with each other and that means going to the dump illegally and dumping your garbage and hoping the guys don't call you on it and being terrified of this to your core until you realize after many years that the guys at the dump don't really care where your garbage is coming from.

Comedy does offer an avenue to television and film careers for untelegenic people that great drama does not.