Alex Borstein

I've always felt like an outsider as a woman. I've never really felt wholly comfortable in a women's world or woman's things. I've never been conventionally pretty or thin or girly-girl. Never felt dateable. All I've seen on TV has never felt like mine.

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.

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.

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

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

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

As an actor, you create your own ideas.

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

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.

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