Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

I can't satisfy myself with just trying to tie all of my imagination into music, especially when music is not appreciated as an art form as much as it used to be.

It's just a way of trying to get to a third thing that's not particular to any quote-unquote genre. It's been great for me; it's really opened me up and gotten me to use that part of my imagination. It's very scary in a lot of ways, and just as exciting.

I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the imagination.

Reality has always been too small for the human imagination. We're always trying to transcend.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

I can imagine few things more trying to the patience than the long wasted days of waiting.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.

I'm still trying to figure out how to write about cancer and my family's experience with it. If I had been able to write 'The Pura Principle' back in those days, I'm positive it would have had no humor in it. Which means the story would have been false.

I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

Women's humor seems to be a little more supportive. It's just kind of trying to make the other one laugh through funny voices and kind of talking about other people. I respond to that. I feel less like I'm going to get beat up in a room full of women than I do in a room full of guys.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

With humor, it's so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.

Lesbian humor isn't trying to sell anything, it doesn't have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian onstage is still a very political act; if it weren't, more women would do it.

They don't make you pay for the humor. It's up and down, but they're trying to give you as many laughs as possible in 2 minutes. They are the most honest comedians ever.

When you do find humor in trying times, one of the first and most important changes you experience is that you see your perplexing problems in a new way - you suddenly have a new perspective on them.

He was just trying to tease me - I knew that later - but he said he'd have to leave because it wasn't fair to have anyone in the room who was going to make fun of what he had to say. He had a good sense of humor, really.

The book, '12 Rules For Life,' is a very serious book. There's elements of humor in it, but I'm trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it's necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there's hell to pay if you don't do that.

You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it's been something I've been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it's something I hope to continue because it's interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

As a young actor, people were trying to define who I was before I really knew that for myself. But I still remember thinking, 'This is what I love doing, and I hope I'm going to be able to do it forever.'

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

All I was doing was trying to get home from work.