I think female solitude is a mental condition as well as a physical state. You can be married and a spinster. I think spinster is an identity every woman can claim, if she will... I feel like a lot of women, or a lot of feminists, joke about taking to the sea or living alone in a cottage as this kind of fun freedom.

Ghost! I miss him! Is that weird? I miss him even though I invented him. I feel a lot of tenderness toward him. I don't write a lot of stuff that is sad or that is tender and affectionate, so that has a very special place in my heart.

My history teacher could make us feel like he was imparting rare gossip to us when he was talking about Maria Theresa and the Habsburgs. I just loved that sense of - the Western canon is here, and it's gossipy and tawdry, and everyone is sort of goofy.

I attended an evangelical Christian university on the outskirts of suburban Los Angeles and by the time of my graduation was neither evangelical nor Christian.

Humor is always more interesting when it comes from someone who's had more than, like, five experiences.

One of the things that would be great is to some day have so many women comedy writers that we wouldn't say there's just one type of female humor. There's lots.