“A couple months after school started that year, I just plain stopped going to see the Maje. I remember coming home one day and checking the answering machine in my bedroom. The first message was from the Maje. He was waiting for me to come over. He sounded feeble and desperate: "Steve, where are you? I need you? Are you coming? Please . . ." I deleted it. The next message was also from the Maje and said pretty much the same thing. Delete. There must have been a dozen messages on that machine from the Maje, all begging me, pleading with me, to come help him. I deleted every single one of them. To this day, I have no idea what happened to the Maje, no idea if he ever got that cataract surgery. That's how our relationship ended. It still makes me feel horrible to think about now: I just deleted the Maje.”

“When we were working on Jackass and I'd be traveling in the same bus, car, or van with Johnny Knoxville on road trips, he'd sometimes stick sedative pills in my food in the hope that they'd shut me up so he could enjoy some peace and quiet. Never once did it work. Each time, I think he was truly amazed at the doses of downers that failed to quiet me down.”

“I have no idea where my pathetic nature comes from. If I thought about it too long, it would depress me.”

“He caught hold of my hand. “Sydney, please don’t do this,” he begged. “No matter how confident you feel, no matter how careful you think you are, things will spiral out of control.”“They already have,” I said, opening the passenger door. “And I’m going to stop fighting them. Thank you for everything, Marcus. I mean it.”“Wait, Sydney,” he called. “Just tell me one thing.”I glanced back and waited.“Where did this come from? When you called me to tell me you were coming, you said you’d realized it was the smart thing to do. What made you change your mind?”I gave him a smile that I hoped was as dazzling as one of his. “I realized I’m in love.”Marcus, startled, looked around as though he expected to see my object d’amour in the car with us. “And you just realized that? Did you just have some sort of vision?”“Didn’t need to,” I said, thinking of Wolfe’s ill-fated trip to the Orkneys. “It’s always been right in front of me.”

“I don't know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things just start to happen.”

“Come on, just say, "I do." It comes from the verb "to do." That's all you need for now. Then we'll move you on to "I did.”

“...My father muttered something to me, and I responded with a mumbled "What". He shouted, "You heard me," thundered up from his chair, pulled his belt out of its loops, and inflicted a beating that seemed never to end. I curled my arms around my body as he stood over me like a titan and delivered the blows. This was the only incident of its kind in our family. My father was never physically abusive toward my mother or sister and he was never again physically extreme with me. However, this beating and his worsening tendency to rages directed at my mother - which I heard in fright through the thin walls of our home - made me resolve, with icy determination, that only the most formal relationship would exist between my father and me, and for perhaps thirty years, neither he nor I did anything to repair the rift.The rest of my childhood, we hardly spoke; there was little he said to me that was not critical, and there was little I said back that was not terse or mumbled. When I graduated from high school, he offered to buy me a tuxedo. I refused because I had learned from him to reject all aid and assistance; he detested extravagance and pleaded with us not to give him gifts. I felt, through a convoluted logic, that in my refusal, I was being a good son. I wish now that I had let him buy me a tuxedo, that I had let him be a dad. Having cut myself off from him, and by association the rest of the family, I was incurring psychological debts that would come due years later in the guise of romantic misconnections and a wrongheaded quest for solitude.I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.”