Moms Mabley said you have to say good things about the dead. I say, 'He's dead. Good.'

I've always felt that a really good joke, a really good one-liner, is a really good line of poetry. It's imagistic, it's compact, there is a rhythm to it.

As you can imagine I'm disappointed as anything that I was not selected to be the presidential running mate. And I find it continually appalling that it would be a radical thing to have a woman on the ticket.

Once he became president, George [H.] Bush revealed a vein of Styrofoam and no matter how deep he tried to go, he always ended up bobbing on the surface. His inaugural speech was like being present at the death of language.

Lesbians are likely to be drawn to stand-up, if only because it's cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible for women. But the very form of stand-up is masculine.

Teaching is performance art.

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.