“I’ve always felt like if I don’t laugh at the things that are happening, especially the most tragic things, then they win. There have been very few points in my life when something happened that was so bad that I couldn’t laugh at it… Really, for me, humor has been a life raft. It’s helped me to get through it because whenever I feel like there’s no way that I’m going to be able to get over this, there’s something so freeing and wonderful about writing a joke about something that seemed like this terrible monster that cuts it down to size and makes it something that you can deal with…”

“I work in the comedy business, and a lot of comedians—when they would find out about my story—they would kind of salivate, almost, over these awesome stories that I had, growing up in the wild, in the woods with these deaf people. Because they’re always mining their lives for material, their day-to-day lives or the past, to try to find something funny to say on stage. And here I’m sitting on this treasure trove of material, and not doing anything with it. Everyone just kept saying, ‘You’ve got to write a book, you’ve got to write a book!'”