I think that's important: to know 'the other,' as a means of coming to understanding.

Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing's coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, 'This is really good.'

In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.

People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.

Thanks to my family and guru. They were quite confident that I could do it and think about music as a full-time career.

Several of my uncles are comedians. My father is a comedian; my grandfather was known for his jokes. It definitely runs in the family.

My family had to flee Iran... the revolution, and we were very, very lucky to come to America and have opportunities presented to us. And that's... one of the things that makes America great.

I just happen to believe that what's at stake in the early child's development is so vital and so important, and I think it is founded in the main, in the broad cultural sense, on the relationship between the mother and child.