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.

[Penn Jillette] said, 'If a truck is barreling toward you, no amount of positiveness will stop it from hitting you.' I needed to hear that I didn't have to be enthusiastic all the time. Some days you just need to be in a bad mood.

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.

To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God.

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

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.