In my neighborhood growing up, 8, 10,12 kids were the norm. Those stay-at-home moms would handle so much physically and emotionally. Even in my early teens, I could tell those ladies were something.

Improvisation, if you play it at the top of your intelligence, leads to a kind of truth that people find really accessible.

I live in this apartment building, and everybody who lives there thinks of me as a housewife. People drop their babies off with me. Or I get notes: 'I'm going to be gone for three days. The keys are under the mat; take care of the cats.' Because they all think I'm home all the time.

I thought of Second City as just the greatest therapeutic job anybody could ever dream of having.

I have a gay cousin who came out to my parents before he came out to his own. So I benefited from having a very open, supportive family, and I want to pass that on.

I was adopted by a Salvadorian mother and a white father. Growing up having complete identity crisis. Then my search for my mother and trying to find out why I was given up, and how could a mother give up a child, then finding out the circumstances of my birth was pretty traumatizing.

Acting is not in the blood. My parents weren't actors, but I imagine that if you've been brought up with actors, you have a lovely time at home and just want that to carry on.

I grew up around a lot of various religions, so it's a part of my consciousness in a way. Everything from heavy Catholicism to followers of Indian spiritual masters to Unitarian universalists - all in one family. Though the family aspect was stronger than any particular dogma.