As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you're a kid again, poking around in your parents' closet, only this time there's no chance of getting in trouble, so you don't have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew.

I like being able to go grocery shopping and not feel that Im fighting a thousand people.

I cannot stand superheroes. I do not understand any of its appeal. It has just bored me to death since I was a little kid.

My life is so boring that your brains are going to melt and come out of your eyes.

I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason.

A friend of mine gave me a very good piece of advice, which is if you don't think your kids are going to want it, don't take it.

You would open a drawer, which my father had jammed full of newspapers, and the bottom would drop out. There were buttons and screws and nails and bottle caps and jar lids – the drawer of jar lids! Why? Because they're made of metal and maybe there'll be another war and we'll need the metal. A friend of mine – I quote him in the book – says, 'You have found the source of the river eBay.'