The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.

I was a precocious only child and then I went through a fat awkward stage for several years so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive so I think it was more of a natural progression for me developing into comedy.

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again from zero.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well as it turned out I never wrote a great novel sadly and I never converted to Catholicism happily but I did do one thing he did. That is in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.