I'm just kind of fascinated by how we can deny that we are animals and what our impact on the other animals is like, and how quixotic we can be in trying to assess what we've done in trying to correct it.

I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much.

I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control.

I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.

I didn't even know any cowboys growing up. When my friends heard that I was marrying a cattle rancher and moving to the country, they literally could not believe it. They started calling me the Pioneer Woman as a joke.

You don't expect to be touched by comedy. But when it happens, it's beautiful.

Comedians paint ourselves into corners all the time, and tastes in comedy change. The guy in 'The Hangover' was a really fun character to do, and it was easy to do. But you have to find other things because audiences will let you do that for a little bit, and then they're like, 'What else do you have for us, monkey?'

I don't resent at all people saying, 'Oh, he's like a sweetheart'... but within comedy, it's a very funny way to talk about someone because it usually means they don't have much of an act.