There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.

My career is as an actress. I am an actress playing a comedienne.

I am never honored. My career is hilarious to me. I am either under the radar or over the radar.

Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.

My parents got married when they were 16, and they never had any money.

I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.

The truth is, I can't help the way people perceive anything, from the role of financial industry in the economic crisis, to the place of women's fiction in the canon of modern literature, to the rank of mint chocolate chip ice cream as a favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor.

At CARE, a leading humanitarian organization, we recognize people live their lives in a holistic manner. Issues such as health care, education and economic empowerment cannot be addressed in a vacuum. Thus, effective programs need to tackle the multiple root causes of poverty.