At fifteen, it [ "Follies"] didn't have any kind of resonance with me, this show about regret and middle age.

There's a real fantasy quotient to my work. Any play that I've written for myself to perform in basically begins with the idea, "Wouldn't it be fun to be, say, Jean Harlow in a pre-code movie?"

Joan Rivers is a very wise lady. We're good friends, and I find her very much an inspiration as to how to conduct your life, and how to remain very youthful, with ambitions and dreams. Anyway, she always says that she says "yes" to everything, because you never know which thing will click, or be thrilling.

It's more interesting to put yourself in the place of Bette Davis than Irene Dunne, I guess.

I read a lot of those Single Girl in New York books, like "Fear of Flying," where you could sort of put yourself, through transference, into the Jewish Girl in New York situation.

I don't think I could ever go to Auschwitz, because when we took that tour of MGM, I nearly collapsed outside the Thalberg building.

At fifteen, it [ "Follies"] didn't have any kind of resonance with me, this show about regret and middle age.