The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

It's spooky to look at yourself, because you are never quite what you think you are. And you are never as good looking as the person you are acting with, or something like that. So I learned to stay away from it because it was giving me more negative feelings than positive ones.

I think probably the most difficult challenge was just the climb and rise in show business because I went through my entire twenties with some success as a comedy writer but not much as a performer. And you have to be kind of informed and naive at the same time.

I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines.

With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.

There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex, you know, in art. There's a lot of naked women and men, and there's intrigue, there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.

Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.