Tina Fey

I think I’m brave about some things and a huge coward in other ways. My fake bravery is talking in front of a bunch of people who might hate it.

The woman who did the costumes tried to put me in these Waspy clothes, and it just didn’t work. I feel like ethnicity and fashion go together. So, yeah, knockers up and tight skirts. Somehow it’s better.

You don’t just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at ‘SNL’ is writing to go after someone.

No other formula gives your baby a better start at life except that stuff that comes out of you for free.

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head – like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society…unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go onstage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience, and I like to feel in most cases like I’m a big guy with long rubber arms that I can reach around my audience and swing and sway with them – move them with me. And many nights, I can’t. Many nights I can. But you do like a good manager with a baseball team. You keep pulling pitchers, you keep trying.

I don’t do too well there. If you were brought up in London, where you can walk around everywhere and there are theaters, you can’t really do LA. I couldn’t make a life there. You’re in a car all the time, and there are no seasons.

My career has been a combination of hard work and timing. Working with Stevie Wonder at the Kennedy Center Honors was timing. The Tonight Show was timing. Carnegie Hall, that was timing. My marriage was timing. I was ready, I wanted to know what it was like.

[on “Pleasantville”] We were thrilled for just the three nominations we got, but obviously it’s a little sad. I went through so many press junkets with people saying they loved it. And Joan Allen was robbed but she can’t get nominated every year. She’s an inspiration for every young actress. She has that calm and reserve about herself and makes you think she appreciates the normal things of everyday. Then she transforms into this character that’s so different.

Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.

Tell her: jealousy is a disease, die slow.

The only reward for anything is food.

I’ve watched the Emmys for almost my whole life, so it was crazy to finally be there in the audience clapping and actually going on stage. Hopefully one day I’ll get to be actually nominated.

Then I got a call the next day from the assistant director saying that they were putting me on a personal training programme. I thought that would be pretty cool, because it would make me take it seriously. It was run by one of the stunt team, who are the most absurdly fit guys inthe world. I can’t even do 10 press ups. I did about three weeks of that, and in the end I think he got so bored of trying to force me to do it that he wrote it all down so that I could do it at home.

I come from a very small island which is packed with people. I mean, jam-packed with people. I’ve lived a life which has been pretty much full up with ambition, ideas, stimulus, creativity, some negativity which I try and avoid.

I feel like dress socks differentiate you in a different way – especially men in suits who just have the traditional business suit. The dress sock is the way to change it up in your mind and I like wearing my pants up higher so you see them.

No matter what we say, entertainers are usually quite insecure, wobbly characters underneath, and maybe that bit of glory or that bit of expression or whatever it is compensates in some area.

There is nothing wrong with a woman welcoming all men’s advances as long as they are in cash.

Down the road, I’ll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

When onstage, I always try to take my audience through as many emotions as I possibly can. I want them to go from laughter to tears, be shocked and surprised and walk out the door with a renewed sense of themselves – and maybe a smile.