Still a comedy nerd’s wet dream, Sarah Silverman wants you to find other synonyms to describe her outrageous self.

Sarah Silverman and Vladimir Nabokov have something in common. And despite an early joke of hers (“I saw my father naked once, but it was okay because I was soooo young… and soooo drunk”), it has nothing to do with Lolita.

Like the great Russian-American author, Silverman absolutely hates doing interviews that require her to converse. Sure, you see her on all the late-night talk shows, but those appearances are all scripted. And yes, you’ve read about her in countless publications, from Playboy to Maxim to Esquire to the New Yorker to this month’s Vanity Fair and everything in between, but many of those interviews are done by her preferred method: e-mail. The composed response is understandable when it comes from a composed man of letters—but from a woman whose entire professional life has been standing in front of a microphone, making people laugh? She has talked freely of her battle with depression, her bevy of unwanted hairs, and a problem with bed-wetting that lasted through her teen years. She’s not exactly shy and demure. What gives?

“I just come up with better answers,” she says from her home in Los Angeles, explaining her penchant for written responses. “I can think for a second. I’m not an improvisational comedian.”

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Comedy

Sarah Silverman comes clean, but don't call her potty mouth