Well it's a humor strip so my first responsibility has always been to entertain the reader... But if in addition I can help move readers to thought and judgment about issues that concern me so much the better.

I wore goofy hats to school and did musical theater. Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it no one can bring you down.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally there are exceptions... the Jewish Italian and Irish humor of the East Coast.

Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.

When a thought takes one's breath away a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.

A pun is the lowest form of humor unless you thought of it yourself.

When I was a kid my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.

I told the President I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them they are not going to sit down and talk.

The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy filled with hope and thought 'Now I understand the whole point of work of life of love.'

For myself if I am to stake all I have and hope to be upon anything I will venture it upon the abounding fullness of God - upon the assurance that as the heavens are higher than the earth so are His ways higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts.

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope without friends without books even without music as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

When things are bad we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

I place no hope in my strength nor in my works: but all my confidence is in God my protector who never abandons those who have put all their hope and thought in him.

But yeah I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought you have a receptacle to go home and say 'Oh this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way and I love that time.

Well I'm not good with sliminess. I hate the thought of creatures that have slime on them or creatures that leave a slimy trail. At home the sight of a slug can bring up my breakfast.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

Oh stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people then great.

Spare a thought for the poor introverts among us. In a world of party animals and glad-handers they're the ones who stand by the punch bowl. In a world of mixers and pub crawls they prefer to stay home with a book. Everywhere around them cell phones ring and e-mails chime and they just want a little quiet.

In the theatre people talk. Talk talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn't.

Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.

In high school a teacher once suggested that I be a math major in college. I thought 'Me? You've got to be joking!' I mean in junior high I used to come home and cry because I was so afraid of my math homework. Seriously I was terrified of math.