I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.

Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.

When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.

I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.

The interesting thing about humor is that in humor, you - in logic, something is A or not A. In humor, it's both A and not A.

It used to take me forever to read and comprehend stuff, so I decided not to make the 'Captain Underpants' books too challenging. Don't get me wrong - the humor and ideas are often sophisticated - but the books aren't hard to read. I wanted kids who hate reading to find these books irresistible.

I probably wouldn't have pursued comedy further if my friends didn't tell me that my getting kicked off the stage was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.