I definitely want people to laugh because I don't think there's a better feeling - I think it's just so fabulous to laugh. I don't mind if people think, either. I think the brain is a very sexy organ.

I'm really happy that I was raised Catholic because it's given me years of material.

Gays have always been in the military. Alexander the Great was originally Alexander the Fabulous. A gay man invented C-rations. He claims he could never talk anyone into the cilantro garnish. Obviously, gays were not allowed to design the outfits, because we never would have stayed with the earth tones for so long.

Lesbian humor isn't trying to sell anything, it doesn't have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian onstage is still a very political act; if it weren't, more women would do it.

Laughter takes the tyranny of the lies we are told and told and told and it blows them apart.

Each time we had a visiting writer, I asked what she thought of women and humor. By the end of the year, I had perfected my question and asked Adrienne Rich why there was so little written about women and humor. She looked at me right in the eye and said, 'You write it.' I took that as an order.

So few people voted in the elections [of 1996] that the ones who did were called activists.