I retired sort of willy-nilly and only after I started writing the column did I suddenly discover there were all these things out there that I hadn't learned about. And so my mission became to try to educate future retirees about what they were going to face and what they needed to know.

Kopp ’89 Discusses Education Reform, Looking Beyond the Classroom | Princeton Alumni Weekly

I ignored my stand-up career for 25 years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

But then the amazing thing is to look back. It looks like it all was a straight line. You can see the straight line of light and that makes us who we are.

But that’s part of the process, isn’t it? Something might not fit in the show. Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.

No. Although I have to qualify that. Though he was, by jazz standards, a very square composer, he was, by musical theater standards, a not square composer, and he taught me to be less square. I tend to be square.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.