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I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.

Growing up, I had a front row seat to seeing two people work really hard. My dad scrubbed toilets at a private Catholic school for a while, and that was to help me get through school.

I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.

I was homeless for a little bit. I was on people's couches, but it was an amazing journey. I got to make people laugh all the way.

I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.

Everybody takes breaks, and I decided to take mine. I wanted a chance to wake up at two in the afternoon and not be a subject of entertainment. I wanted to be a human being. At certain times and certain years, I felt like the Energizer bunny. That gets old very quickly.

When I had a fellowship at the Smithsonian, I asked for a couch in the office because I liked to lie down and take a break.

During the first couple of years at school... I used to take my lunch and go down by the old fair grounds & sit alone by the side of the road & eat it... Those lovely, lonely lunches stick deep in my memory as unhappy times.