David Sedaris

Like earning it, earning those laughs.

I mean, it's going to happen, you know, to everybody.

And you wind up in a nursing home and you're talking to a spatula, you know.

And hopefully when I'm in that condition, I won't remember how wonderful it was to have this career, right?

Hopefully I'll have...

I won't even know my own name, hopefully, because to be there and to remember joy and know that you'll never experience it again will be pretty ugly.

I said that like somebody who has stage four cancer.

There's nothing wrong with me.

I don't foresee any end to this.

I mean, as long as people come, maybe toward the end, I'll have to pay people to come.

And the money will flow in the other direction.

That would be kind of a fitting conclusion to your career, I think.

Well, why don't we close with a section of the book in which you've just done a good deed for someone.

It was a stranger.

I think you moved a piece of furniture for them, a cabinet down York Avenue back to her apartment.

And we pick up with the two of you part ways.

This is from chapter Cash and Carrie.

We waved goodbye and then parted, saying we'd maybe see each other in the neighborhood.

As I hurried downtown, a man sitting on the ground outside a liquor store held out an empty cup.

Help the homeless?