Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.

It's horrible for someone to listen to someone learning any instrument - when I was first learning the banjo, I used to have to go out and sit in the car, and even in the summertime I'd have to roll up the windows. Because you just couldn't practice a banjo or a fiddle with other people around. Unless they're being paid.

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.

She looked down again and I was stymied. I sat. Oh, this was enough to make me love her, because I was right with her, understanding every second and longing to step in. I didn’t even need to know the specific that was troubling her, because to me her halting voice easily stood for the general woe that hangs in the air, even on life’s happiest days.

Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

Whether I'm involved in creating something or not, it's a personal issue of do I respect it. But you can only know that five or ten years later.