“The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there is. If so, we’re in big trouble.”

“Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.”

“I think I’m just very real, and people sense that. They know everything about me. This is a platform that’s probably more powerful than politics, and I think if you have a loud voice, you should use it for good.”

“Dory is just innocent, very childlike, and that’s fun to play. And I can relate to the short-term memory [loss]. I ­really do say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ at the same time people are saying, ‘Nice to see you again.’ ”

“I love stories that are inspirational yet have a lot of heartache, because I think that’s what life is,” she says. “Life is filled with struggles and yet there’s always beauty.”

“I don’t like to make fun of people. It’s a form of bullying. I’ve been the butt of jokes before—a punch line—and that just gave me more fuel to say I will never do it.”

“The world is filled with negativity. ‘I want people to watch me and think, ‘I feel good, and I’m going to make somebody else feel good today.’”

“I love being able to do a monologue every day, make people laugh, give them things, and then go home [knowing] I’ve done something creative.”

“I’m sensitive. I like to be around kind, gentle people. It would be really hard for me to be around somebody who is harsh or sarcastic all the time.”

On her wife, Portia: “We’re together all the time. We genuinely love each other. Her happiness is my happiness, and vice versa. True love is caring more about the other person’s happiness than your own.”

“I represent happiness to a lot of people. I want to keep myself as open and as nonjudgmental as possible. Before the show was picked up, I think a lot of station managers thought I would have an agenda to try to somehow turn the world gay. People did worry. Our only agenda is to make people feel good. It’s an hour of joy.”

Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

I am a little world made cunningly.

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.

I fix mine eye on thine, and there Pity my picture burning in thine eye...

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

At one blood labors to beget, Spirits as like as it can, Because such figures need to knit, that subtle knot which makes us man.

Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun.

Hee that hath all can have no more