Quotes from Jane Lynch

I did voice work for many years before I started having success as an actress. It was mostly radio and television voiceover work, but I know my way around the studio. I know how to use the cappuccino machines and the headphones.

I watch very selective television. I watch 'Mad Men,' and I usually watch a season at a time.

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

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 do feel that softness for the vulnerability and the innocence in our world, including my own.

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.

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

I auditioned for a one-act version of 'The Princess and the Pea' called 'The Ugly Duckling,' and I was cast as the King, starting a pattern of being cast in roles originally intended for men. I went to the first rehearsal, and I didn't get any laughs, and I choked and I quit. I walked away from it and joined the tennis team.

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

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

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.

I think my cruelty hides beneath the surface a lot more than Sue Sylvester's.

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

You can't make a cloudy day a sunny day, but can embrace it and decide it's going to be a good day after all.

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

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.

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.

We're all conditioned to think we have to get to the top and be the best.

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.

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

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