I don't think of myself as a comedian but as an artist a scientist and chemist who just happens to be funny. I started doing stand-up to add another level to my game. I feel that I'm a young rookie with a veteran's skill.

I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally so I don't know what's funny about a character... This happens to be a feature of my life generally.

But if something funny happens I can't resist. I have to tell the people.

A funny thing happens in real estate. When it comes back it comes back up like gangbusters.

I take life as it happens. And I give myself a lot of freedom.

That happens every time I get behind a guitar regardless of what I'm saying 'cause music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart.

My girlfriend Siri is a food blogger and we both love to entertain and eat. This is what happens when you're in your thirties: what was once a passion and real appetite for nightlife in New York City manifests itself into other things like entertaining at home.

The kitchen's a laboratory and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology chemistry physics. Yes there's history. Yes there's artistry. Yes to all of that. But what happened there what actually happens to the food is all science.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare no matter what happens to the world that's not equity it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them held their hand looked in their eyes been there.

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

Fame is something I think happens as a result of trying to do good work. If you're trying to be famous your work usually suffers.

I'd die if I was Madonna. I'd die. God what a horrible way to live. And Michael Jackson! To be so famous and to feel so isolated. I feel so bad for them. I don't know how it feels and I hope it never happens to me.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics called Cheetah blades Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.

But when you lose a family member or something tragic happens that stays with you forever. You never get over it. Knowing that you have to deal with that for the rest of your life... Football is important but not as important as you once thought it was.

Everything happens for a reason. I'm used to it I prepare for it. Like I say at the end of the day those in charge of their own destiny are going to do what's right for them and their family.

So many of my friends are still trying to get record deals and I've had one for 10 years now where my only goal is to make the best music I can make. I've been very lucky. I have great faith that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and whatever happens is going to be absolutely right for me.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical it's because I really don't know how it works but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read in order to find out what happens next.

When you put your total faith in God no matter what happens to a person who's a true believer if you die you know you're going to heaven to be with God.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don't think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism Islam or other faiths.

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself I have failed three times and what happens when he says I am a failure.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.