Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.

To me, torture would be, "I can't think what to write in the next sentence. I'm stuck." Torture would be if you didn't have the next idea.

The teen years are extremely serious and everything matters and every insult really hurts. I know there are cliques and bullying. And you don't yet ­understand that it will all go away.

The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

I do think that animated films have the ability to touch you someplace. There is something about live action movies that is different because we know the characters are real people, so they always stay flawed for us somehow. But animated films touch us in a very clear, uncomplicated place. They have that ability. And an animated character can make an expression in a way humans can't do.

I don't watch myself gener­ally. I do something, see it once, and then I'll probably never see it again unless it's an accident.