When women go off together we call it separatism. When men go off together we call it Congress.

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.

We really got a lot of very conservative gay people. You could look at the figures from the last election and realize that a third of the gay movement voted Republican.

When women go off together we call it separatism. When men go off together we call it Congress.

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.

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.

In his second term, [Ronald] Reagan completed the work of his first term - the rich got really rich, everything was deregulated, advocacy programs were quashed, the Savings and Loan program was trashed, the deficit was tripled, unions were busted, Housing and Urban Developing was in shambles, banks were closing, the military got lots of new toys, the religious right was strong, and AIDS was ignored.