Stephen Colbert

Make no mistake: I love women. I'm married to one, I was birthed by one, and I played one in my high school production of 'Romeo and Juliet.' No one else could fit into the bodice.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.

I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing, to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you.

If you don't give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don't hurt you anymore. And you actually have power over those people.

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics - not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn't.

I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.