When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.

If black boxes survive air crashes - why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

I never joined the Boy Scouts. I don't trust any organization that has a handbook.

What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her.

The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.