I suppose if I'd got a brilliant first and done research I might still be a don today but I hope not. People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.

Nothing you write if you hope to be good will ever come out as you first hoped.

What we hope ever to do with ease we must learn first to do with diligence.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.

I live in literally the same home when I was swiping my first bank card and wondering if I'd have to put back the Charmin. We still don't have a dishwasher. My mom has done all these gardens so now my house looks like the garden shack in the middle of Versailles.

I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby you know I'll do anything locally but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'

And now I still really don't care that much but now I have music playing all the time at home which is a first for me. Whatever. Everything from Ani DiFranco to Dave Matthews to Jack Johnson and Norah Jones.

When I came home for the summer after my first year of college I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2 000 miles in a what? Well my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?

I think my children know that Mother's priority is to be with them first. But I don't think it has to be an either/or situation. Work is very important to me and it wouldn't be in the best interest of my children for me to stay home seven days a week.