It’s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else’s story.

You have to constantly recreate yourself in show business, which is a very fast thing, especially now with the tremendous speed of social media. There are so many personalities, so many different kinds of comedy that you can access, so it’s definitely important to stake your claim and say who you are.

I think I heard it [ Ferris Bueller's Day Off ] earlier. This was being played on a station in San Francisco called Live 105, which was a new wave station. It was one of the first stations to change its format in the early '80s. There was this wave of really strange music coming from Europe like Kraftwork and Freur.

I don't like catchphrases either. A current one would be, "Bye, Felicia." It's used so much that we don't even know the origin anymore.

My history in show business spans over a quarter of a century, and I have seen many people in the industry struggle with coming out, only to find much more success after they finally did.

The intention is to make people laugh, to make people happy. It's unselfish, it's in the service of others, and as a comedian you are making yourself vulnerable in order to make others happy. And it has a transformative power.

Let's not hate ourselves. We are all we have. ... I have been a longtime perpetrator of hate crimes against myself, and I am turning myself in. I have had enough.