I hope that everyone has the opportunity, whatever their work environment may be, to be surrounded by people that they respect and are inspired by.
Janet Varney
I believe that truth is one of the most powerful tools we possess against victimization, exploitation, and fear.
I'm always so impressed by people who can just stay super mellow and still be extremely funny.
I wish I felt that I acted like Korra in any part of my life. I really carry around 'Be the leaf' in my head. That's not a character, but it's something from the show that's really impacted my daily life.
Marilyn Monroe appeared to be perfect, but she wasn't perfect.
The whole time that I was doing the voice of Korra, I would always joke around saying that nobody's gonna give me a job as an action star or a hero. I just do silly comedy.
Being a teenager is complicated.
I was raised by a dad who has a fantastic sense of humor who raised me on 'The Muppet Show,' Steve Martin movies, and Woody Allen's standup, and he really encouraged me to ham it up from an early age.
I just want Emma Thompson to be my best friend.
I always had a pretty serious fascination with fire. Luckily I'm not an arsonist!
Because Comic Con in San Diego is crazy, and it's very commercialized, and it's corporate, and it's all about money and selling, selling, selling... I think people want to go to smaller, specialized cons.
It's easy to be silly in real life, but making stuff up onstage, that seemed hard. Better to be the funny person off-the-cuff in the room than to risk being unfunny onstage.
I had a pretty normal, non-Hollywood life for most of my 20s in San Francisco.
I guess I knew I was a people person, but I didn't know how much till I had a podcast.
I just love the geeky comedy boys! Those are the guys I go for.
When you share something about your adolescence, it's a way to roll over and show your soft underbelly when it comes to talking about your past and the person that you once were.
I always say I owe my sense of humor to 'The Muppets' because I didn't necessarily know what was going on when I watched 'The Muppet Show,' and obviously, 'Sesame Street' was made just for me.
The good thing about being in San Francisco is it's a city that seems to have the flexibility and undefined boundaries.
Both my parents were high school teachers, and they were beloved high school teachers, so I constantly meet people through my dad's life where they'd be like, 'Your dad changed my life. He's the reason I became a lawyer. He's the reason I started writing. He's the only reason I stayed in school.'
I have such respect and awe for journalists who are able to communicate important information to the masses without sobbing.
'Bridesmaids' was phenomenal. It deserves every accolade it's gotten, and it's exciting for every woman in comedy.
I love doing comedy. But sometimes, that exists at sort of the mid-level to the high-comedy level of craziness, and I don't necessarily get to plumb the depths of kind of serious acting as often.
I can't believe I managed to go through a liberal-arts and theater education and take all these women's-studies classes and never have addressed that the 'Muppets' were all boys, except for one pig who was obsessed with herself!
I love the podcast medium. I really like the intimacy of it. You're just listening to voices in your ears.
I'm just a huge dork, and I hope I always am.
One of the things I've learned in playing a character like Becca from 'You're the Worst' is that there really is such a joy and freedom in behaving badly and in being a character that you do roll your eyes at. She's just so delicious to loathe.
I think there's part of me that's longing to play a Sherlock Holmes or sort of a House character, like a real detective. Like a real, moody detective. Like a real, sarcastic, mentally ill detective. I think it would be really fun to do something like that.
It's great to be an actor, and it's great to embody something more than who you are.
If you go to my house, it's not like I'm 5, but I definitely have a lot of toys and weird, tiny miniatures.
I did a pilot for Nickelodeon that didn't end up going to series.
I think, coming from an improv/sketch background, I'm just used to having people around me to feed off of and support.
I like to live in a world of unicorns and rainbows where I don't pay attention to anything unless it's positive.
I have two pets - a dog and a cat.
I love doing voiceover.
To me, the real genius in making television for kids is making something that inadvertently - or perhaps intentionally - becomes something that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
As me, I couldn't love my cohorts P.J. Byrne and David Faustino more. I just adore them, and any opportunity to be in a room with them is just a kick in the pants; I love it.
We're living in this world where we have so much media all the time. We have access to imagery all the time.
I love interacting with the fans.
I love seeing cosplayers, not just of Korra, but anybody.
Just doing voices for cartoons is just a dream come true.
Los Angeles has been great to me, and I have a home there, and I'm so lucky I get to do what I do for a living. But I did not go down to Los Angeles really even with the intention of staying.
I had such a sense of purpose when I moved to San Francisco, and the purpose was purely to be in that city, and I was going to figure out the rest.
I do feel like, because my podcast is so specific, I've been really fortunate in that the kind of people it attracts tend to have interests that run with mine.
I don't particularly love watching myself on camera.
Let's face it: quaintness is creepy.
Believe it or not, it actually does rain in L.A. from time to time.
I have this weird thing where if I close my eyes, I feel like no one can see me.
Pretty much everything I carry with me, I learned I needed the hard way. I sweated, dry-lipped, dry-mouthed, soaked-to-the-skinned my way through all of these lessons.
Just keep the idea in the back of your head: 'I can't control L.A. traffic. I'll leave earlier than I think I need to, and I'll get there when I get there.'
When you're a writer, if you're very lucky, you create these characters that you fall in love with, and you feel like they're guiding you rather than you guiding them.
