“A lot of the songs in 'See Jane Sing!' are pulled straight from the kitchen table and my parents harmonizing together.”

“But now that I've matured, I've realized that - at the end of the day - what's really important is the work, not what people think of me.”

“Charlie Sheen was such a pro.”

“Everybody has their own way to deal with it. I don't concern myself with other people's - whether or not they want to come out, it's not something for me think about.”

“Football is very masculine and, to me, a metaphor for war.”

“From the start. As early as - I felt I was in the wrong sex; I really did. I would go into my dad's room and put on his clothes.”

“I always ended up having the funny part in Shakespeare, but I really thought I'd be doing theater. That was my ambition for myself.”

“I became quite a diva, and intolerant, and people knew when I was not pleased. Some people were afraid of me, and other people just kind of blew me off. But I wasn't making any friends. I only had one person who remained my friend, and he was my boyfriend for a while. Even though I told him I was gay, he was like, 'That's alright.'”

“I can be kind of razor sharp in my disapproval.”

“I can fool people that I was educated.”

“I could be pretty volatile, especially when I didn't feel understood, which was 99 percent of the time. I do think that, as a young person, I suffered over that. But as I look back, it doesn't even feel like part of me - except when I act and need those emotions. Then I can dredge it up.”

“I didn't have a coming out moment.”

“I didn't want to be gay. I wanted to be... I wanted an easy life. And you know what? I am gay, and I still have an easy life.”

“I do like to go to movies. I like to be in the theater. I like the event of it.”

“I don't have to talk to a surgeon to play a surgeon, you know what I mean?”

“I don't really sit there and think, 'What would I like my life to be?'”

“I don't wear particular designers. I wear whoever fits me well.”

“I get the male thing. I like being that for a woman. But I also like being a woman, too. I like being girly.”

“I go to coffee shops for my outlet. Which is just not healthy at all.”

“I grew up in a Southside suburb of Chicago. It was idyllic. But I was plunked into a family that was not artistic and didn't know how to deal with my emotions.”

“I had friendships with two people in my life who, when I attempted to do my habitual behavior of building a case to break up with them, wouldn't allow me to do it. They both said to me, 'I'm not going anywhere.' And that moved me so deeply.”

“I have a big family. Even though it's only three kids in our family, it's always aunts and uncles and the whole thing.”

“I have acting technique; I have singing technique; I don't have a writing technique to fall back on.”

“I have to admit that I was a little nervous when I showed up for my first official 'Wreck-It Ralph' recording session.”

“I know it sounds new age-y, but what I've truly come up with is that you really need to trust that you're on your own path, as long as you stay true to it and you show up, which is 99% of it.”

“I like for Sue Sylvester to be firing on all cylinders.”

“I looked at my mom and her life, and I thought, 'I don't want that.' I don't think my mom wanted it, either. I think my mom did want to be out there and have a career. She loved working. As soon as we were old enough to feed ourselves, she was out.”

“I love being in these ensemble comedy movies. I love working with a bunch of people and coming up with, you know, How can we make this moment funnier?”

“I love being the villain.”

“I love doing sketches, but I don't relish being by myself. That's not something I'm used to doing.”

“I love Jennifer Saunders, the 'Absolutely Fabulous' creator.”

“I love Matt LeBlanc in 'Episodes' - he's very good. And the 'Modern Family' cast just cracks me up.”

“I love the character I played in 'Criminal Minds.'”

“I loved working with Cybill Shepherd. We had a good time together; we enjoyed being girlfriends. It was a real comfortable fit for us. I loved putting on a suit and tie.”

“I never thought I would work with Meryl Streep. I also love Cate Blanchett.”

“I never went through a biological clock experience. I never even heard it ticking.”

“I stopped watching television like a fiend once I got into college.”

“I think a little tidbit I can give you is that I grew up with basically everything handed to me, except for my career. I worked for that.”

“I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody's face, they're going to say something that offends somebody.”

“I think that network TV is going to either have to reinvent itself or it's going to have to be more competitive - there are just so many options now with streaming and everything.”

“I think the only way we can really get you to laugh hard is if we take it to a deep psychological place. It has to resonate with you on a really deep level in order for you to really do that good guffaw.”

“I try to dress the bottom I have. The body I have and the bottom I have. I have the intention of looking fabulous every time, and I care about it a great deal. I'm very vain.”

“I wanted to - any chance I had to dress up as a boy, like Halloween, I would be a pirate or a ghost that wore a tie. A hobo.”

“I wanted to do something where I could hang my hat.”

“I was a huge 'Friends' fan. I had a very small part. I played a real-estate agent in the very last season.”

“I was filled with angst all the time, but when it came down to it, I dove into what was in front of me, and I always did my best. I invested 100 percent. And that's what saved me.”

“I was not the kid that hung out at the arcade.”

“I worried too much when I was a kid.”

“I would love to do the therapist on 'Two and a Half Men' again or just work with Charlie Sheen.”

“I'd drop whatever I was doing to show up to do the graveyard shift of 'America's Shopping Place.'”

“If you're contriving something, if you're making something up, it's not funny. You can tell. It's instant. It has to come from someplace real.”

“I'm a character actress, and my particular brand is more mature, so I had to wait until my age caught up with the tricks in my little arsenal.”

“I'm a person who likes habit and knowing what my job is.”

“I'm an actor more than anything else.”

“I'm fascinated by Greta Garbo. My cat's named Greta, and I have a framed photograph of her from 1949.”

“I'm kind of a 'Fix-It Felix' video girl. I like the simpler, sweeter kind of games.”

“I'm kind of a manic exerciser. I'll like exercise for a week and be crazy, and then I won't do it for six months.”

“I'm like Jay Gatsby. I like to throw the party and then stand back, looking gorgeous. Stand back and watch it.”

“I'm not out to conquer anything, which I think is a good thing. That's why I also think crazy, different things come my way. I really don't have an agenda, and I'm really happy not to have one. I'm just keeping it light.”

“In Chicago, actors start up companies and get together and produce things, and there's a really rich, vibrant non-Equity theater scene out there.”

“It has to come from a truthful place in order to be funny.”

“It was my own internalised homophobia. I didn't want to be gay.”

“It's always a good idea to go up for the male roles. You go up against a bunch of beefy guys, and the casting director then feels smart for taking you on, like he's the one who thought outside the box.”

“It's really fun to come to the same place to work every day.”

“It's so amazing that you can give somebody like David Fincher 'House of Cards,' and he can do whatever he wants - Netflix doesn't say, 'Oh, you can't do that,' or, 'We need a subplot here about this.' It's pretty neat that it is allowing the creatives to be creative.”

“I've actually never done standup before.”

“I've always sung. My dad had a song in his heart and on his lips 24/7. A lot of the time, it was the same song and the same phrase over and over again.”

“I've been in Chicago for every Christmas of my life.”

“I've had days here and there where I would get discouraged because I wasn't a big star, but I've made a living ever since I was 27. Not a great living, but enough for me. I think actually being able to pay my rent and eat and perform is enough, and I did that for many years. Then I had some good years in there, too, where I made pretty good money.”

“I've just always loved singing, and I come from a family that loves singing around the kitchen table.”

“I've never been a cheerleader. It's so outside of my range of things I could ever do.”

“I've never really had specific goals and stuff like that - I think I sort of learned early on that if you kind of let life roll in at your feet, you will get a lot of great stuff if you are just aware and open to it.”

“Making people laugh is a really fabulous thing because it means you're getting deep inside somebody, into their psyche, and their ability to look at themselves.”

“My brother was listening to his transistor radio. He kept switching the earpiece from one ear to the other, which I thought was his idea of a joke. 'You can't do that,' I said. 'You can only hear out of one ear.' 'No, I can hear out of both,' he answered. And that was how I discovered I was deaf in my right ear.”

“My first love, in my head, believe it or not, was Ron Howard.”

“My parents felt judged by me.”

“No one's just going to hand you a career. I waited for years for someone to hand me one and it never happened.”

“Nothing like falling in love with a dead actress to prove your sanity.”

“Once you start classifying and trying to identify your own comedy style, you've ceased to be funny.”

“One of the few advantages to not being beautiful is that one usually gets better-looking as one gets older; I am, in fact, at this very moment, gaining my looks.”

“So much of Sue Sylvester, the angry woman, came from that part of my life, wanting to crush other people's dreams and judging others so harshly, which is always just a way of deflecting your own self-judgment.”

“Standing by myself, just having everybody looking at me the entire time, is not my idea of a good time.”

“Television is really fertile ground, and it's because of platforms like Netflix and Hulu and, of course, the cable channels like HBO and Showtime.”

“That weird dark energy - when I was a kid, I didn't know what it was. I just had to 'thrash it out,' as my mother called it. I became quite intolerable, creatively and artistically, with other people. I wanted nothing more than to be part of a group, and yet I couldn't help alienating people.”

“The comedians who I admire that are really good, they always take it to a deep psychological place.”

“The funniest people are usually the best actors, I believe.”

“The more I become comfortable in my own skin, I think the funnier I become.”

“The world, universe, God, whatever you call it, has so much more in store if you just sit back and relax and do what's right in front of you.”

“There are still parts of the country where it's hard: when you realize you're gay, it's like a death sentence.”

“There I was as a kid: a closeted homosexual who wants to be an actress. I had no choice! Wanting to act was something I was wired with when I was born. I never thought I would have success or celebrity, although I did want that. But what I wanted more than anything was to work.”

“There's nothing better than voicing a character. You don't have to worry about what you're wearing; you've got the script in front of you, and it doesn't involve your body: it's all about your voice, and it's really fast work.”

“There's this weird kind of coming-in-from-left-field thing going on, and I love it - I am a huge fan of Christopher Durang.”

“To this day, I still would choose the angst over something easier, when I really don't have to.”

“When I look back, I think I must have been hugely motivated. I would have loved for somebody to say, 'You go for it!' I just didn't have that.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. I really had gender issues.”

“When I was a kid, we would get McDonalds on Christmas Eve, and that was a big deal because the closest one to the south side of Chicago was a 35 minute drive away. I remember opening the bag and smelling those fries, and even now when I smell them, it reminds me of Christmas Eve.”

“When I was a young person, when I was in high school, we did a very emotional and wonderful - for us, life-changing - production of 'Godspell.' It really, really was the highlight of my high school time, and it was for everybody else in the cast, too.”

“When I was younger, I actually wanted to be in the spotlight. To have people want me, want to have a piece of me.”

“When I'm not feeling good about how I look, I figure if I just buy the right piece of clothing, I'll feel all right.”

“When you get out of school, you just go where the wind blows: Here's an audition; there's an audition. And before you know it, you're where you're supposed to be. And that was Second City.”

“When you raise your voice in song to express what's going on deep inside of you, I think people just react to that because it's so truthful. It's so raw.”

“Will Ferrell in 'Talladega Nights.' He's a very generous performer. He's kind of just one of the guys, but his name happens to be above the title.”

“You know 'Ninotchka?' I recommend it. It's kind of a mess, too. It was before, you know, we got slick editing tools, so it kind of chops along.”

“'Zoolander.' Yeah, I mean, I love Ben Stiller; he's just a brilliant guy. And I love Will Ferrell in it, too. His character, to me, is just insane, and he made such huge choices, and he's such a weirdo!”