An ungodly amount. So much of timing and luck was involved. When I look back, I think if things just hadn't worked out as they did on every occasion, I'd have never gotten where I did.

So the values were career, medicine. Sport was something other, something to be set aside.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. 10 of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

I didn’t fear failure. I expected failure. I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than success. The success took me by surprise and it frightened me.

I go back to this idea that I only discovered when I was older. I wish I had known it when I was younger, because I think I missed a lot of observations in life. That is to develop your own philosophy. I always thought philosophy was one of the most useless subjects in the world.

I remember one teacher in particular. I was in a school in the third grade and they were thinking of skipping me, putting me in a higher grade. But then somebody said that would be bad psychologically. So, for that entire year, because I had learned all the lessons that year — the multiplication tables, whatever the reading was — this teacher let me go off by myself and draw pictures. So I had hours and hours of time where I was just left to my own devices, drawing pictures. And she would encourage me. That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn’t become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do. I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that’s what I do as a writer. I just sit by myself, being in my own mind, not being directed at what I should be doing moment-by-moment, not having a clear plan set out by anybody and just letting imagination enter into the blank page. So in that respect, I can thank Miss Grudoff of the third grade for allowing me that.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people, and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.