My parents are both pastors. In the '80s and '90s in the mainstream Christian world, it was not really common for a woman - especially a married woman and a mother - to be a pastor.

It certainly was unusual growing up with two fairly well-known pastors as my parents.

I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor.

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.

In the hands of a passive-aggressive person who wants to abdicate responsibility for things, texting is a great tool. You can really go nuts.

When I think of Emily Dickinson, there's not one particular poem of hers that jumps out, but I do have a very vivid image of an ill woman with giant eyes who wants to write about the sun exploding.