Acting is collaborative because you are working with another actor, and it's almost like a two-man juggling team. You have to really be in sync.

Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

...a young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of soft-shell crabs.

I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.