Hollywood wanted a certain type of comic - that Def Jam comedy style of comic that was very loud, very brash, very much from the ghetto, had that sensibility.

It seems that there's a constant humbling - I don't know if that's the right word - because things are disproved all the time with new discoveries, at least that's the way it feels sometimes in the layman's world. Like, people will make proclamations of something to be true, and then 50 years later that's proven wrong because there's something else.

You could be a music prodigy at age 4, like Mozart, but you can't be a writing prodigy.

I've always felt like I had a guardian angel in some of those ways.

Catholic and Jew - it's very closely related, a lot of holidays, a lot of guilt, a lot of the same things going on.

I try to impart this when people say they want to be a writer and they want to go into show biz. I say, "Well, have you taken any courses? You can't just have a passion for it; you have to prepare yourself for a life of it."

Hollywood wanted a certain type of comic - that Def Jam comedy style of comic that was very loud, very brash, very much from the ghetto, had that sensibility.