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When people don't know who you are, they're seeing your work for the first time. But if they've seen a lot, getting certain things across is a more difficult.

The bottom line is that your performance is made in the editing room.

None of the editors I've worked with have ever asked me to pull my punches. They've never asked me to give them anything other than my own interpretation of events.

In my experience, with very few exceptions - I am, as it happens, one of the exceptions - the one thing that most editors don't want to do is edit. It's not nearly as conducive to a successful career as having lunch out with important agents or going to meetings where you get noticed.

There are times when I'll send a manuscript to an editor, and I'll think it is the most likely project I've ever sent them. And they might call me the next morning and say they couldn't tolerate it. That happens so frequently that I've given up any expectation of knowing what anybody's going to like.

I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.

I like to edit; I like to work with other people, and that's something stand-up doesn't really have.

Usually, with the work I've done, by the end, I usually feel like it's a failure. It doesn't matter how it's received.

These are very subtle things, of course, and I don't expect everyone to pick them up consciously, but I think that there is something there that you must be able to feel, there is an energy at work that I must trust my audience will be able to pick up at some level.

People have to find ways of explaining the work.