So in that way, fame has become a weirder thing to go after, but the thing about me is I've never been after fame. That sounds cliché, but it's true. I think fame sounds uncomfortable to me, but being able to like write this book and make my living doing very exciting, creative stuff sounds really amazing. It has been really amazing.

life becomes satire in real time, what good is the premiere satire magazine? It might as well just be the newspaper. You could pick up The Wall Street Journal and be like, "Oh, what a funny Onion headline!" And then the editor of The Onion is like, "Huh. I guess you won't be needing me anymore."

I knew what I wanted to do when I set out. I knew that I wanted to write a book that told the story, obviously. I wanted it be comedy first, because I felt like there already had been childhood druggy stories that were very serious, and I felt that the unique thing here was that I was a comic and I could tell the story with some levity, and I have been laughing at these stories my whole life.

I got a naughty thrill out of listening to music that was that dirty, especially being that young and able to listen to it around my parents. Kids would come over to my house to listen to Too $hort records.

My brother and I both like sarcastic, insulting comedy, so that's a way we communicate. Somehow that's what we learned. My mom is not a really sarcastic person. She's a really sort of overly loving person, and my brother and I came out little cynical bastards.

I'm admitting that I don't know that to be true, but it does sound pretty good. So a big part of my childhood was affecting black culture and black accents and black music and anything black I was into.

When you're reading, you're laughing and not quite noticing what's happening. One second you're still kind of chuckling, and then all of sudden you're in the third act of the book and in this very dark and claustrophobic place.