Women and minorities have excelled beautifully in comedy, but very few women are the lead in a drama.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

All men are difficult.

They say that Madison Avenue will only pay high dollars in advertising if they get the 18-35 age range.

But Angela had at least 30% more viewers on the same night at the same time. I mean, she wiped everybody out. But the sponsors don't care when she had the most people. They only care about if there was only a handful of young viewers on the other one.

Studios were just run differently. There really was a head of a studio. There were people who loved their studios. Who worked for their studios and were loaned out to other people and everybody sort of got a piece. Well now there's a handful now.

I've come to learn that there is a real difference between men and women. It's genetic.

There are only about three really, really good sitcoms on the air.

But it took me awhile to figure out Christine at this age, you know.

Women and minorities have excelled beautifully in comedy, but very few women are the lead in a drama.

I think, on the whole, men are much more shallow than women.

I kind of resent this attitude of men that we somehow must always look good.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

The whole tone now of TV is under 35 and directed toward males.

But I've always believed that Christine Cagney shouldn't be played past a certain age.

And they were writing scripts where Christine had hit the glass ceiling. And I always thought Christine would never hit the glass ceiling. I thought her dreams would take her. Maybe her dreams wouldn't take her where she wanted, but she still had her dreams.

I think there are some people in life who are not marriage material and Chris is one of them.

Network heads don't seemed to be turned off by the men who get older.

Yeah, even a black comedy. Where it's a little eerie. I'd love to do that. But there are about three really fabulous ones on the air now and I don't know if I can do any better than that. I'd like to sort of forge new ground.

I don't believe there is any character that one can play for that long and not bring a piece of you to it.

Something just happens when you read a part. You know, if you'd like to do it or if you don't believe it.

The way they were writing Christine as this older woman who got married, which she shouldn't have. Obviously got divorced right away. Reached the glass ceiling in the police precinct. So there is a part of her that died because she knows she couldn't go any farther.

There's no praise or acknowledgment paid to women who raise the babies.

Well what do you do with a character like Christine Cagney and you tell her she can't have things?

Yeah, I've always been accused of having a sense of mischief and I'm very flattered that you say you can see it in the roles I play, because I think that's important, even if I do play intense characters, like especially Christine Cagney.

I'm not here to put down men, God love them and I'm married to one, but I do think they are more shallow.

In my early days I was a contract player at Universal and I had a wonderful mentor named Monique James, who was head of talent there, and she used to drag me on sets to do parts.

You know what I would really like to do? I'd like to do a half hour drama with comedy in it.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

I really enjoy comedy. It's a real challenge.

I've mainly been in dramas, so this is one of my first comedy kind of performances in Cecil B. Demented.

Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.

Comedy is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

It is really hard to do comedy; it takes a lot of energy and focus. It's rather like music: It's a lot of hitting notes precisely.

This is one of his most human and most amusing and witty novels. The characters are very Indian. I decided that I wanted to do a comedy, so this was just the right one.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

I'd really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy.

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.

Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said "But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously," and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.