The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

I'm real. I believe what I'm saying. If Motel 6 wasn't the type of operation they say it is - and I stay at them when I travel - I wouldn't do their commercials. That comes through on the radio, and that's what it's all about.

Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.

Somebody says, 'Do a Tom Bodett, a folksy kind of thing,' and it sounds like something out of 'Hee Haw,' very insulting. They turn wry humor into disparaging sarcasm, and you get what amounts to insulting advertising.

I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting.

People feel vulnerable when they travel. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of or talked into something they don't want. Staying at Motel 6 makes you feel smarter. In fact, I think it actually means you are smarter, but I have no hard data to support that.

Like most Alaska immigrants, my roots continue to petition for equal time.

In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

I'm not an impersonator. I've only got one voice and only do one guy and his first-person essays.

It's not like Alaska isn't wilderness - it mostly is. But most Alaskans don't live in the wild. They live on the edge of the wild in towns with schools and cable TV and stores and dentists and roller rinks sometimes. It's just like anyplace else, only with mountains and moose.

That's what the American odyssey is really about: Leaving home. Leaving home and coming home, and trying to understand the difference.