My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.

Not being a comic book fan being thrown into that and seeing the extreme - it's taken very seriously. So I tried to do as much learning as I could about it so I wasn't mean or anything.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten 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.

I thought they may have presumed too much knowledge of certain things for people who are not comedians. Like Montreal. A comic understands what it is and its importance but someone else may not know about it.

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful amusing a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard.

The comic is the perception of the opposite humor is the feeling of it.

My stories are very somber so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides life has so much humor.