Decide what it is that you are and then stay true to that thing. My brand is based very much on how I live my day-to-day life.

Television itself is an intimate medium. It's in your house. You're visiting with these people... Not everybody's going to like it, just like not everybody likes everybody on the playground. I mean, that's life - especially if your job is to just go out there and be yourself.

I live in, literally, the same home when I was swiping my first bank card and wondering if I'd have to put back the Charmin. We still don't have a dishwasher. My mom has done all these gardens so now my house looks like the garden shack in the middle of Versailles.

It's continuously humbling to work hard, you know? As long as you've got a good work ethic and a sense of humor, I don't think anybody can become too much of an egoist under those circumstances.

The most essential part of my day is a proper dinner.

I don't have to write jokes. I don't have to write insults. If you ask the man of the hour in the hot seat, my mere existence is clearly insult enough.

My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.