My specialty at 'SNL' was doing triage. There was always a great need for someone to say, 'Make this funnier. Give me an ending for this. What's a better big laugh for this towards the end? What's a better physical joke in this?' And I just really, over time, honed that specific thing so well.

Paula Pell

I was a very earthly, matronly, plus-size little girl with a pure heart.

Paula Pell

At my confirmation, where you get the Holy Spirit, I came down the stairs at my party and had torn, like, 80 holes in my pantyhose and said I had the Holy Spirit, and just would do things like that all the time.

Paula Pell

I grew up where the repercussion of you having an opinion was being 'cocky,' or people would be mad at you. And I have finally learnt that it is better for them to be mad at you and disagree than you be so mad at yourself all of the time for not speaking up.

Paula Pell

My specialty at 'SNL' was doing triage. There was always a great need for someone to say, 'Make this funnier. Give me an ending for this. What's a better big laugh for this towards the end? What's a better physical joke in this?' And I just really, over time, honed that specific thing so well.

Paula Pell

All the women I've grown up with at 'SNL' and other areas, and even the women that work with Judd Apatow, all those women are powerful, assertive women that have great material, and they just produce themselves.

Paula Pell

I was half Catskills comedian, half 1800s matron.

Paula Pell

I'm a late bloomer, so I'm going to embrace it all.

Paula Pell

I was born in Joliet, Illinois. It was totally Midwestern - small, little house, two great parents, and a sister and a beagle.

Paula Pell

It takes a special kind of family to bathe together in their 40s.

Paula Pell

Young, handsome men never flirt with me. I get heat from old dudes that run the parking garages.

Paula Pell

It's easy to trick yourself into thinking something's funnier than it is.

Paula Pell

Twitter is really - I got very addicted to it just because it's so simple, and it's like a video game for comedy writers to just do a one-liner about something.

Paula Pell

Some children challenge themselves to maybe run a marathon or something. I challenged myself to stay up for two days and make cinnamon toast and watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon and laugh and cry.

Paula Pell

If you're hired to be a funny person, you have to trust your judgment but also be open because sometimes you think something's funny, and the next day you read it and go, 'Oh, my God.'

Paula Pell

You're under the gun at all times because it's live TV. A lot of time, between dress and air, you're having to come with an entire ending to your sketch that gets an even better, bigger laugh - which is terrifying... People are filing into the audience, and you're writing a new joke for the end of it.

Paula Pell

I think, as a woman, you have to really make sure that you're taking care of yourself and make sure that you're covered and you have enough material written for you.

Paula Pell

Commercials used to have such a serious tone to them or a really corny tone.

Paula Pell

I was always a bit of a class clown.

Paula Pell

Everyone knows people like that: You're looking at their milky, glazed-over eyes, and you know they're not listening.

Paula Pell

My sister was three years older than me, and she was like the stone-cold '70s fox. I looked like a short Polish farm woman, and so our journals were wildly different.

Paula Pell