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Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.

In fact, it used to be a joke if you studied at a University.

I studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they'd read or understood.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Some people stay in the academic world just to avoid becoming self-aware. You can quote me on that.

In school, I wasn't a very good student - I was very irresponsible and never did the studying but always liked to get the laugh.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.

I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

The English reputation for humour is a way by which people avoid revealing themselves and have superficial relationships, so that you can engage in banter without making yourself vulnerable.