The first time I went to see a Second City show, I was in awe of everything. I just wanted to touch the same stage that Gilda Radner had walked on. It was sacred ground.

You don't just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at 'SNL' is writing to go after someone.

If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.

If you care about [the characters] as if they were real, that always helps.

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.

When I started on 'Saturday Night Live,' I had the choice of wearing contact lenses, which I had never worn before, or glasses, in order to be able to read the cue cards.

I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.