Quotes from Jeffrey Tambor

The honor of being able to play Maura is transformative. I'm 70 years old. I should be in a reading room, reading Dickens or something.

'Clocked' means someone sees you for being transgender.

To you people out there, you producers and you network owners and you agents and you creative sparks, please give transgender talent a chance. Give them auditions. Give them their story. Do that.

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.

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.

Mel Brooks and David Zucker - there are very few people who know silly, and they're usually hugely intelligent, because you have to be intelligent to get it. Like the Marx brothers. I love it.

I don't like show business. I don't like the business. I love acting. I love this. I love talking to people.

In Yiddish, we say, 'Nisht ahin un nisht aher.' It's neither here, it's neither there. I get more nerves than on anything I do when I'm doing multi-camera. But single-camera, I love very much.

When I was young kid, I used to watch Jack Benny, and I thought the minimal aspect of what he did was revelatory. I loved Jack Benny.

I'm a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.

We have been treated gorgeously by Amazon.

I was with Robert Preston in 'Sly Fox.'

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

The shedding of any clothes, when you're 70 years old, is tricky.

I can only speak for me... but in my life, I find that, in sobriety, I feel much more, and I have much more depth. I also feel - not to segue, but as being a parent of five kids, I can bring much more to my acting, and so I'm all about anything that gives you more feeling and more depth.

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

I'm really aging myself, but I grew up with 'Playhouse 90' and the plays on the air - 90 minute plays.

We are part of the zeitgeist, and we are communicating in a human, real way.

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

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.

I think most of my heroes are not the traditional types. A guy I was fascinated with was Buster Keaton. I just love what he did. I love that mug.

That's just me and my own body issues - I think I'm fat and bald and old and ugly.

I give a speech at some colleges and corporations called 'Performing Your Life: An Evening with Jeffrey Tambor.' I get asked a lot of questions, and people say, 'Your stories are wonderful. You should write a book.'

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