All I listened to until age 18 growing up was musical theater. I liked the escapism of it.

I was kind of an unhappy kid. I always felt like a cynical New Yorker trapped in a little kid's body. I started to get some pretty bad anxiety disorders around puberty, which totally did not work with growing up a mile away from the beach. I started cutting my own hair.

The No. 1 thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence.

It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew?

For me, it's nice to have a character who can never find love and have that be the running theme, but I think when you open the door to a story line about relationships, you open the door to another realm of comedy.

If you watch most of the stuff on TV and in movies, it's usually put-down humor. It's like somebody being mean or cynical or thoughtless to another person. I never wanted to be that type of comedian.

If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.

If I could work with Eddie Murphy on 'SNL,' I think I could quit comedy forever. For me and my generation, he's God.