It was a fine cancer experience, as cancer experiences go.

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.

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.

I think one of the basic tasks in life - one of the nice things we can do for each other - is to take things that are horrible and scary and make them acceptable and less frightening and, if possible, funny. It feels great to succeed at that.

It was a fine cancer experience, as cancer experiences go.

Losing my faith was the most spiritual thing that ever happened to me.

I just became a stronger agnostic, and then I started to realize that everyone who was saying they were agnostic really hadn't thought about it that much. Still, I went with agnosticism for a long, long time because I just hated to say I was an atheist -- being an atheist seemed so rigid. But the more I became comfortable with the word, and the more I read, it started to stick.