Mirabelle replaces the absent friends with books and television mysteries of the PBS kind. The books are mostly nineteenth-century novels in which women are poisoned or are doing the poisoning. She does not read these books as a romantic lonely hearts turning pages in the isolation of her room, not at all. She is instead an educated spirit with a sense of irony. She loves the gloom of these period novels, especially as kitsch, but beneath it all she finds that a part of her indentifies with all that darkness.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

You know, you're really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.

It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay up on it.

Kids like my act because I'm wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there's a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny.

Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don't know, there's something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.

In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I'd meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I'd wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.