You get very comfortable doing the open mic circuit, turning up to the same places and playing to 20 people. In that situation, it won't matter if you aren't great on that night because no one will really remember who you are. Then suddenly you are doing rooms to 400 people and you have to up your game.

Until I was about 14, I was a fat boy, or at least I looked like a fat boy. I think that being funny was a bit of a defence mechanism for me, so I ended up being a bit of a joker.

I told the ambulance men the wrong blood type for my ex, so he knows what rejection feels like.

I don't know if I was funny as a child, though I always thought my parents really enjoyed listening to me sing.

You have all this education theory, and people try to make larger statements than maybe what their data would back up, because they've done these small experiments that are tied to a very particular case with a very particular implementation... theory definitely matters, but I think dogma matters less.

The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all.

I don't have much time to read. I'm more of a problem solver. I'll have an idea or a problem, and I'll learn what's necessary in order to do the idea or solve the problem. If I need to read a book, then I will, but it usually comes down to researching on the Internet and reading blog posts.

Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.