“I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was. I was growing up middle-class in a time when growing up middle-class in America meant there would be jobs for my parents.”

They had developed all these bad habits of being objective and balanced and stuff like that.

Being a comedian, you’re under pressure. You have to deal with stress and pressure to perform – to deal with pressure without stress.

Russia has a strategy of creating the conditions that give rise to corruption, then exploiting that corruption to its own benefit.

Sometimes if I tell people, ‘I’m afraid that I’m really a fraud,’ or ‘I have a lot of self-doubt,’ they go.

Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia.

Gary Bauer is a very good – he’s a good friend of mine.

They’re about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.

Minnesotans know the difference between the job of satirist and the job of senator. And so do I.

But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we’re an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we’re going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.

Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that.

I think if you’re going to do a movie about Reagan, you do it about the fact that he created the huge deficit.

My parents didn’t make a lot of money. My dad was not a high school graduate.

Anybody who deliberately propagandizes with lies should be held up to scorn and ridicule.

My dad always told me to stand up to bullies, and Bill O’Reilly is kind of a bully, and he’s the kind of kid who hits other kids on the playground.

I grew up in Minnesota, where we treasure our tradition of civic engagement – and our record of having the nation’s highest voter participation.

I’m angry at the right wing media. And by that I don’t mean the media is right wing.

When I was kid, I remember playing ‘Vogue’ by Madonna over and over and over again.

What fuels me is that there are a lot of people coming to Broadway and to the show [Aladdin] for the first time.

I still follow that model: just go hard every day, and take it one step at a time.

Lots of kids and lots of adults and it’s usually the kids were it’s a special moment for them.

I love when people will say, “Oh, my songs are my children.” I understand that, but I’m also not afraid to kill my kids.

What’s cool about renting is that you don’t care about your house getting destroyed. So I think that is the number

I do a lot of inspirational talks for kids, to motivate them to change their lives and give them hope.

Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist…