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The more comfortable I got onstage, the more comfortable I got expressing myself in a physical manner. And it almost shocked people - 'Oh, is there something happening?'

If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

Sometimes I get a little drunk, sometimes I get a little out of it, sometimes I get out of tune onstage, but that's something that shouldn't be dissected.

I'm now learning how to distinguish when I'm acting and when I'm not acting - offstage as well as onstage.

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

I never used to speak to the audience at all. I never really knew what to say onstage.