7:30 p.m. Friday, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., $40, $36 FAC members; 634-5583, csfineartscenter.org. SOLD OUT.

Comedian Paula Poundstone doesn’t overthink her stand-up routine when she’s out on tour.

“I talk about raising a houseful of kids and animals,” she says, “and paying attention to the news well enough to cast a halfway decent vote.”

She’ll perform at the Fine Arts Center on Friday.

The 55-year-old got her start on the stage in 1979 and has gone on to become an author (“There is Nothing In This Book That I Meant To Say”), actress (“Cybill,” “Hyperspace”), political commentator (“The Tonight Show” during the 1992 presidential campaign), columnist (“Hey, Paula!” for Mother Jones) and longtime National Public Radio panelist (“Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!).

– On Hillary Clinton:

“I’m a Democrat, therefore I guess I hope that she wins. What I really wish is that Bernie Sanders could take the world by storm. I’m all for the disheveled.”

– On Donald Trump:

“He’s the Danny Kaye of politics. He puts a smile on everybody’s face. If you don’t have the shackles of reality you can say some great stuff. My children discovered that years ago and so did I as a teenager.”

– On politics:

“I say stuff that occurs to me but always with the understanding that I might plain be wrong. So many people are convinced they have all the answers. I come at it from an isn’t this curious kind of way rather than that I have all the answers.”

– On watching the news:

“My knowledge of what’s going on in the world is based on how dramatic my life is. If I’m steeped in Poundstone drama I don’t have space for the rest of the world’s drama. Is the situation in the Middle East going to change dramatically in one day? It’s like in high school when you’re watching soap operas. You could stop watching for two months and then watch again and it’s all in about the same place it was before. In my lifetime in the Middle East we’ve not made any headway.”

– On Kim Kardashian, the celebrity who caused an outpouring of angry NPR listeners after her guest stint on “Wait Wait” in June. Poundstone wasn’t on the panel that day but heard about the commotion:

“I’m not sure how I would have reacted to it. My manager said she was really good, but my opinion was but why would you (have her) to begin with? I’m not sure that she’s driving the conversation in the right direction.”

– On her 15 cats:

“There are tufts of fur all over the place. They’re all laying fat and lazy during the day but at nighttime there’s squabbles. In our house it’s primary season all the time – without the money.”

– On her 17-year-old son, who has an electronics addiction:

“It co-opts the developing brain. Adults suffer from it as well. It centers around the smartphone. In China and South Korea this is considered the No. 1 threat to public health. We’re so in denial we haven’t gone to the trouble of solving and investigating the problem of how it’s altered the developing brain. For myself, I do Twitter, but there’s the problem – it’s the constant checking. Same with email. If I went to the mailbox as many times as I check my email my neighbors would stage an intervention.”

JENNIFER MULSON, THE GAZETTE, 636-0270, JEN.MULSON@GAZETTE.COM