I always was a performer, from the time I was little. It was always a natural place for me to be.

We were in front of a live audience and I would be acting with the man who was playing my lover, and we used those words, and the audience would titter and laugh, and make me uncomfortable doing the scenes. ... I wanted to sort of stop and yell at them, "What's so funny? What's the matter with you people? Grow up!" It made me very self-conscious at times.

I'm going to be your grandpa! / I have the biggest smile. / I've been waiting to meet you for such a long, long while.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.

My granddaughter's birth has made me want to create things she will love.