If you're going to perform, you're going to attract criticism. You can't please everyone all the time. You don't know how things are going to come out. But that's part of the fun of it, the adventure of doing any kind of art.

At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.

I'm really grateful for the fact that I have full artistic control over my career. I can choose what film or TV projects I'm interested in doing.

Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.

I think part of being human is learning to roll with the punches, to deal with any kind of personal or professional disaster that might crop up. You have to learn to deal with that stuff or not survive.

I respect everyone's right to their own religious beliefs, but for me, this cannot extend to our education system treating some people's lives and identities as if they are somehow less worthy of respect or love.

Girls' education is no silver bullet. Iran and Saudi Arabia have both educated girls but refused to empower them, so both remain mired in the past. But when a country educates and unleashes women, those educated women often become force multipliers for good.

Perhaps I was always intensely curious, but my Columbia education gave me a framework and a perspective to investigate new things - things that could be put into a historical and philosophical lineage.