MALLORY ORTBERG

Humor is always more interesting when it comes from someone who's had more than, like, five experiences.

Ghost! I miss him! Is that weird? I miss him even though I invented him. I feel a lot of tenderness toward him. I don't write a lot of stuff that is sad or that is tender and affectionate, so that has a very special place in my heart.

It's an unfortunate reality of life that toxins are constantly building up in our bodies.

We went to church twice a week. My parents were employed in ministry; we prayed before dinner. We rollerbladed in the summer. We were allowed to watch the 'Simpsons.' I fought with my younger brother over Legos.

I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor.

The Toast's audience is about 30-35 percent male, which shocked me because I would say that we actively try to discourage men from reading our site. Apparently, there's not insignificant number of dudes out there who think that what we are doing is okay.

Did you know that, pound for pound, the moose is the leanest ruminant on Earth? It's true. Moose are very in tune with their natural surroundings.

Eighty per cent of my output is 'Mallory clowns on the Western canon,' and I'm happy to be that person.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.

A lot of my creative energy is spent coming up with a concept that, once I get it, I feel like it writes itself.

Usually my writing is very over the top and bombastic and very, like, 'I'm amazing! Look at me!'

One of the things that would be great is to some day have so many women comedy writers that we wouldn't say there's just one type of female humor. There's lots.

I'm on Twitter a lot of the day because I really like Twitter. It's great for jokes. But when I'm writing, I can't do anything else. I can't even listen to music. I just have to write, and then I can do something else. I can't multitask.

I graduated with an English degree and worked for awhile in academic publishing.

In the hands of a passive-aggressive person who wants to abdicate responsibility for things, texting is a great tool. You can really go nuts.

My history teacher could make us feel like he was imparting rare gossip to us when he was talking about Maria Theresa and the Habsburgs. I just loved that sense of - the Western canon is here, and it's gossipy and tawdry, and everyone is sort of goofy.

My credentials, briefly: I no longer go to church or believe in God, but I can still name every one of the fruits of the Spirit and reeled for days upon hearing the announcement that Audio Adrenaline was reunited with one of the singers from DC Talk.

It's so, so awful for my entire body and my spine and my hands, and I have a perfectly good desk to write at, but I don't care. I love writing in bed.

It certainly was unusual growing up with two fairly well-known pastors as my parents.

My parents are both pastors. In the '80s and '90s in the mainstream Christian world, it was not really common for a woman - especially a married woman and a mother - to be a pastor.

There's no specific mission statement for the 'Toast.'

Usually, the first thing I do when I wake up is I start working, so I often won't start the day by reading anything because I like to minimize my 'commute' as much as possible. I wake up, open my laptop and start working in bed.

I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.

When I think of Emily Dickinson, there's not one particular poem of hers that jumps out, but I do have a very vivid image of an ill woman with giant eyes who wants to write about the sun exploding.

The most successful Subway customers, of course, are the ones who can't keep their hands off their sandwich. Join your artist in the sandwich assembling process. That sneeze guard is a suggestion. That sneeze guard is trying to intimidate you into staying on the customer's side of the partition.