Actress

My rhetoric degree ended up being very helpful in advertising. I got an internship and then figured I will be a copywriter; that will be my path.

I still get very uncomfortable and flushed on the street if somebody recognizes me or stops me. I don't know what to say. It's uncomfortable and strange.

Amy Sherman-Palladino is very funny. She's got just natural timing and comedic instinct. And she writes in a comedic rhythm.

When I was doing stand-up, there were a lot of things I talked about that seemed very silly but were therapeutic.

Stand-up's hard. It's one of the hardest things in the world, and it's really lonely.

'Getting On' - that show, it broke my heart. It really was like the greatest love of my life. I'm forever changed by it.

The hardest thing in the world to depict dramatically is stand-up.

Being an outsider helps breed comedy.

I love the freedom of voice-over and the ability to play multiple characters I could never play in real life: a hot young woman, a little boy.

I always loved performing, but my parents were very practical, middle-class Jewish people.

Every comic is really a frustrated rock star.

As an actor, you create your own ideas.

I think I was born because my parents had two boys and wanted to give it one more go and try for a girl... they got me instead.

If you believe in romance, and if you believe in marriage, you also have to believe in divorce. It's like, with 'Getting On,' a lot of people say, 'I don't want to watch that. It's so dark.' But you can't just want to go to weddings and children's birthday parties. You've got to witness it all.

Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through.

Usually, impersonations come out of something you dig, because you're listening to it over and over. And you kind of start developing... You're really trying to emulate them, then you realize, 'I sound ridiculous doing this. Oh, hey, maybe this is a funny impersonation.'

I'm terrible at learning lines. I'm good at learning lines when I don't have to be word-perfect.

I grew up with a grandmother from another country and having a different language in my house. That gave me an ear for accents.

I never became a road comic.

My dad was raised Orthodox in Atlanta. He speaks Hebrew. He speaks Yiddish. He married a Jewish woman who is not Orthodox, so I was brought up by two different kinds of Jews.