The media is in the business of finding exceptions to everyday life. Bad things are still the exception. That's good, because once bad things stop being news, we really are in trouble. If people forget that bad is the exception, they think they live in a horrible world. There is so much that works and is right and friendly and warm. But we take that for granted.

Kids in Alaska don't know they're growing up on the Last Frontier. It's just what they see on the license plates, and it's something tourists like to say a lot because they've never been around so many mountains and moose before.

That's what the American odyssey is really about: Leaving home. Leaving home and coming home, and trying to understand the difference.

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

For some people, you know, Garrison Keillor, Rush Limbaugh, really the stars, they've got a passion. They eat, drink and breathe radio, and I'm not like that. I used to think I wanted to be. But I need to be away from it, too, and that's the difference, I think.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

I'm not an impersonator. I've only got one voice and only do one guy and his first-person essays.