Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

I learned how to make jokes because I wanted to give people as much fun as they did, and I guess I did, too.

We're here on Earth to fart around

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.