Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town.

You can't write a children's book that takes more than five or six minutes to read, because it will drive the parents batty. It has to be compact. Nobody thinks about the parents when they write these stupid books. I could write longer children's books, but it would actually be bad if I did.

I'm trying to teach my children not to cry. That's the big thing. No crying. Because I think we can all agree that crying is, for the most part, for sissies. If my team loses, I'm going to cry. And I'm going to want my kids to see me crying. Not because I think sports are so important, but because I bet so much money on the game that we'll probably lose the house if my team doesn't win. That's something to cry about.

I don't think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. Until about the age of eleven or twelve, I had zero interests other than trying to steal gumballs from supermarket gumball machines.

By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another.

There is no word for feeling nostalgic about the future, but that's what a parent's tears often are, a nostalgia for something that has not yet occurred. They are the pain of hope, the helplessness of hope, and finally, the surrender to hope.

The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.