when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.

Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough.

You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.

Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.