My philosophy involves imaging terrible things happening all the time, and getting used to it, so reality isn't so bad. And then you're always happy. You really just have to think yourself through it. That is how I've been able to come to happiness, but it is a subtle difference between scaring yourself all the time with terrible things happening, it's more about actually about making peace with it. That's my advice.

It's fantastic to believe, because they get so many benefits. I get mad at the atheist community when they put down believers because they put down religion so much. Now I am an atheist, but I don't like to describe myself with that term. I prefer secular humanist. But I do see first hand how beneficial religion is, for example if you are a refugee getting in a boat to take you across the Mediterranean, a belief in God is an advantage. I completely understand that comfort.

sometimes it's in your limitations that you find your greatest strengths.

Our family was too strange and weird for even Santa Claus to come visit ... Santa, who was jolly - but, let's face it, he was also very judgmental.

I'm not a standup. I don't really have jokes. I don't have 10 minutes. It took a while for me to realize this.

If I look over my life, every single step of maturing for me, every single one, has had the exact same common denominator: accepting what was true over what I wished were true.

Because death and illness are the most horrible things in life, of course that's where the most absurdly funny things are going to happen.