Sublime

I’m not the funniest comedian by a long shot, but I’ve become a student of comedy, and my access to the storytelling, corporate, and film worlds has made my skills very valuable.

People tend to double down when challenged, no matter how wrong they are. A more effective way to approach a dangerous social or business situation is sideways, by asking a question that starts with “I just wanted to clarify …”

Gut, heart and soul . . . and nose.” “Nose?” “Yeah. The great manager also needs a nose for bullshit.”

Best of all, and central to the theme of this book, humor raises your energy, and that can reverberate into everything you do at school, at work, or in your personal life. The boost of energy will even make you more willing to exercise, and that will raise your overall energy even more.

Scott Adams (here) used a similar technique in his novel God’s Debris.

Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule.

it’s hard to know when a cartoonist is being serious and when he or she is constructing an elaborate practical joke. I’ve crafted pranks that spanned years, sometimes when no one was in on the joke but me. Some of those pranks are still percolating. I have posed as other people online and even in person.

I PREFER ORDINARY explanations to extraordinary ones, but that doesn’t always make me right. Sometimes the less ordinary explanation is the correct one. It just doesn’t happen often.

“I didn’t say Steve is always right. I said he always gets it right. Like anyone, he is wrong sometimes, but he insists, and not gently either, that people tell him when he’s wrong, so he always gets it right in the end.”