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In fifth grade, we had to write a story and read it in front of the class. When I read mine out, the class were just belly laughing. And I remember being like, 'This is the coolest!' So I want to dedicate my life to trying to make people laugh. I can't imagine doing anything else.

I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels - horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor.

And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to like that, you know. But I knew that, 'cause I'd do that in school, but I wouldn't do it out there in front of all them people.

From the age of 4 or 5, I loved to make people laugh.

I always wanted attention, and I realized I could make people laugh.

I have the humor of a 9-year-old boy, and sometimes I've had laughing fits on-air.

I like to write books that I would have liked as a child, that would have got me thinking and imagining beyond the words on the page. In a way, my audience is always how I remember myself as a child.

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.

Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out that I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity.

Once in a while, I do these things that would make the 10-year old version of me laugh. I don't know why. You've got to do something a little bit immature. I'm surprised at how often those are my best ideas.