I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to write scripts for television. I wrote for my comedy act. Then I wrote screenplays, and then I started writing New Yorker essays, and then I started writing plays. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the New Yorker essays, but they were comic. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the '90s. In my head, there was a link between everything. One thing led to another.

I'm a bitter, sad, sour young man who makes a career out of hastling people with real careers.

You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.

Rebelliousness really is the province of young people-that kind of iconoclasm.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.

A father carries pictures where his money used to be.