People think of taxes as money just being robbed from you. They don't consider the benefits of paying taxes. The benefits that they get and also the benefit of just being a part of a large group of people: a town, or a city, or a country, or a society that allegedly should stand together and all try to help each other.

You can't achieve anything entirely by yourself. There's a support system that is a basic requirement of human existence. To be happy and successful on earth, you just have to have people that you rely on.

Topical-sketch writing were incredibly rational and well reasoned: don't do a joke if the subject doesn't deserve it. An ad hominem attack on someone might get you a cheap laugh, but it doesn't earn you any long-term trust. The biggest rule was: you attack whoever's in power. Don't bring your personal bias to the table.

I got a lot of texts from friends and emails from friends and most of them were just pure jealousy.

In a weird way, it's not different from any other kind of joke-telling. You make those calculations about jokes about celebrities: is this a fair hit or not? The stakes were higher because the whole world was crumbling around us, but in terms of joke-telling, it's all about feel.

My favorite sitcom of all time is 'Cheers.' That's a perfect example of how, like, people made fun of Cliff, but you never got the sense that they didn't like Cliff.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.