Past a certain age, I think writing about your past feels like it all happened to someone else.

See, when you are young there is this short window between when vivid memories begin and your current place in the world.

But time stretches this window out.

I mean, I have vibrant recollections from over thirty years ago.

And it’s true.

Some of them feel like a recollection of a different person, in a different life.

Of course, I would love to relive some of my favorite memories, but would they be as special if I could?

Understand: There is nostalgia in the hard years.

In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

-Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Amazon)