We are supposed to enjoy the good stuff now, while we can, with the people we love. Life has a funny way of teaching us that lesson over and over again.
I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
John Cleese was a big hero of mine. He grew up in Weston Super Mare near Bristol where I grew up; he was always very tall and gangly, but he was smart and used his physicality in a very funny way. I used to think, 'Well he came from Weston and he did it, so there's a chance for me.'
Part of being a comedian is that it's your job to look at life and regurgitate it in a funny way, to point out its absurdities.
I consider myself very lucky. God has a funny way of bringing some things around and knocking you in the head with the ultimate destination. Something I should have achieved quite easily took me a long time to get around to. It came in His time, not mine.
In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.
And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up.
I'd say Jon Stewart has remained funny the entire time. Jon always makes it funny first. And he's just, he's talking about serious things, but in a funny way. Other comedians will talk about serious things in a serious way, and then you don't know what's going on.
Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.