I really thought I wanted to be a musical-comedy star, but I lived in Phoenix and didn't want to go all the way to New York and be that far away from home. So I thought maybe I'd be a rock 'n' roll singer or an opera singer.
I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.
Maybe I'd be in a different place in my career if I'd had that 10-year plan, a lot of people went at it with this voracity that I never had. My only voracity was to have fun and to be in the mix.
As a kid, I loved being loved, and still do. Who doesn't love being loved?
I've always allowed myself to go on journeys creatively and emotionally, and never put, like, limits on myself.
The live show is different from the album. It's different every night depending on where I am and how many months have gone by since I last performed.
I am still comfortable with my body, because I'm like, What's not to be comfortable with? I mean, it's just my nature.
I was looking for something within Judaism that had a spiritual nature and not just a religious nature. So my trainer at the time was the one who took me to the Kabbalah center on my 40th birthday. I was like, "Oh, this is so cool." I was just ready for it. I was ready for something different.
I was really going through a transition in my life. I was tired of feeling victimized by my career.
I love performing. I love being a provocateur. I love putting myself in situations that are uncomfortable and that I have to get out of.
When I was really little, I was skinny and people laughed at me for being skinny, so, we all pay our dues for the bodies we're in one way or another. But thank god I haven't needed to alter it to feel good about myself.
I think so much of what informs us as performers is what we had to endure as kids growing up. I was the youngest in my family. I always got a lot of attention.
The most important, overriding arc of my career has been that I would never be self-deprecating.
I would never wanna do a show that's strictly maudlin and invaded my personal life and my home. I would never do that.
You can't just try to be a performer. It's in your DNA. I really believe that it's either what you are or it's not at all.
I always have kind of underneath feeling of peace of mind that I get from just the basic tenants of spirituality.
I don't like going back and listening to myself. It makes me uncomfortable, and I know I can never emulate what I did that night, so why listen to it?
It's depressing sitting at a comedy club all night, waiting to get on to do your five or ten minutes of material.
