I'm the leader of the platoon and I run gambling and lotteries, dances and I sell beer illegally. I'm a con man and I'm thoroughly lovable.

I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it.

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

Writing is extremely personal, and that's the joy of it for me.

I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.

The teen years are extremely serious and everything matters and every insult really hurts. I know there are cliques and bullying. And you don't yet ­understand that it will all go away.

There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that.