Being on "SNL" was a goal that I had when I was younger. When I got fired, I just felt really mad and I felt really grossed out by the system and grossed out by myself and it just sort of knocked me on my ass.

There was a while when I got really bad stage fright and I basically felt...I was incredibly angry. I felt like everything had been taken away from me and it was at that point that I realized how much doing stand up reminds me of my self love and curiosity about myself and love of other people because I don't go on stage to dominate.

I learned that I was able to focus. I've always thought of myself as somebody who is like either it's there or it isn't there. I really worked at this, and I focused, and I was able to replace self-doubt with focus. That was something new for me to say self-doubt is there, but it does not need to be in the front row. You can ask it to take a back seat and replace that front row seat with focus.

At the beginning of my career, fresh out of college, I did everything that I could do. And now I'm a little bit more selective. I think that's sort of a natural process.

Sometimes you watch comedians and feel like they're jerking off in front of you, but they want you to see how big it is.

Nowadays, performers who want to create their own material put it on the Internet. I never knew whether or not it would make an impression - and frankly, I didn't care that much about how it would be received.

Don't be snarky, but don't be saccharine. Don't pander, but don't shut people out. Go straight down the line with the performance.