Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

I don't think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.

I'm a firm believer in learning by heart.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

I am completely open to doing a romantic comedy, but I will never do something just for the sake of doing a specific genre or because it's the time or place to do a different type of movie. I think that would be a huge mistake.

If you make comedy, if you try and make comedy where no one gets upset or offended, you're going to fail.

The only thing that I don't like is my kids watching comedy that isn't actually funny. There's a lot of supposed tween comedy on TV that isn't particularly funny, but it's got a lot of laugh track. And I go, 'Please don't watch that. Please just watch something that's actually funny.'

A responsive crowd is great - they help you see new things in your comedy.