Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I'm not much use.

Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I'm not much use.

I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television.

I thought I was gonna do Lear, but I'm gonna do Maura.

I've been in three sort of... I mean, I'd say they're groundbreaking series, if only because of the creators. One was 'Max Headroom', another was 'The Larry Sanders Show', and the third was 'Arrested Development'.

When I was a kid, we got up, we walked a number of paces to a television, turned it on, and changed channels.

I think I made $55 a week, and it was bliss... I was doing theater. It was all I ever wanted to do. It was so much fun, and you got paid for it, and you met people, and it's the greatest education in the world. And in my little Greenbrier station wagon, I felt very much like a troubadour.

I learned the biggest lesson just watching Ed McMahon, watching him watch Mr. Carson's monologue.

I am the Internet guy. But the reason the 'Onion News Empire' was such an easy decision to make is I so trust that side of the fence now.

I loved the gentlemanly way they treated each other. It was unlike anything I was used to. I started helping them strike the set and, at 11, began taking acting classes privately.

You see kids walking to the bus, and they're watching product on their phones. I'm positive that my grandkids and their grandkids are going to put on a pair of glasses and watch something.

I kind of like not knowing how to do something - it's more exciting.

There's a wonderful adage in acting that you're stuck with the character, but the character is also stuck with you.

I can't say enough about the guts and the talents of Amazon. They're so agile, they're so nimble; they picked us up two weeks after we premiered, and their whole attitude is, 'Go, go, go, go,' so I'm very, very impressed.

The real road, to me, was within the actor, within myself, within my own personality. How much Jeffrey can I find, and how much of Jeffrey could I access? What parts of Jeffrey have I never used for Hank or for George or Oscar? - and that was a delight.

You can send a lot of instruction through laughter.

I am a huge believer - I always have been - in the power of comedy. That comedy will break hatred and will bring understanding.

I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.

So many people say they went to school on 'The Larry Sanders Show.'

There was one television in the living room, and we all sat around on Sundays and watched Ed Sullivan.

I came to New York late; I was already past 30.

My new toy is not knowing, because it's very creative. I'm the guy who likes to get in the car and get lost.

You want to feel, 'I know that character.'

When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.

I did not know that you had to learn makeup. I just thought you went, 'Oh, I'm gonna put on some makeup.'

I think shows being sent out this way - pressing a button and 10 episodes can go out to the U.S.A., and the U.K. and Germany, it's very cool.

I love this company. I don't know how it was selected. It's a bunch of machers. They mean business.

The Emmy should be an ensemble award, too. I kept howling at everyone else's performances.

As my manager says, 'These are wonderful problems.'

My part had three lines. I said, 'You look wonderful, sir,' three times. All my friends said, 'Do not take that role - and do not understudy. You'll regret it the rest of your life.' I did both of those things, and I've never regretted it once.

And I'd watch George C. Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors.