I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It's coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don't even know where they are.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I've never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people - more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true - in certain rare, isolated cases.

Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

When the addict gets recovery, his family gets recovery, right?

You have to understand that during the course of our show, we were a family for five hours a day, five days a week, maybe four days a week. And we experienced the same things that we experienced in our own family.

I made odd noises as a child. Just did weird things, like turn off light switches twice. I think my parents thought I had Tourette's syndrome.

Reared in rural southern Alabama, we enjoyed an idyllic Huck Finn boyhood. But education there was casual at best. Our mother and father were high school teachers and challenged the pervasive easy-going ignorance.