ELLIE KEMPER

Most New Yorkers want to look amazing, and they want you to understand that they look amazing, but they also want you to stop staring at them.

I need to make sure that when I'm running out to the drugstore I'm not wearing a Biore strip or something. Not that I expect anyone to recognize me, but on the off chance they do, I just don't want to embarrass myself.

Improv is mostly what I've studied.

If you're going to plan a wedding, then a certain amount of suffering is not a choice.

I loved 'Freaks and Geeks.' I don't know a better show.

I can't do impressions.

New York is like the weirdest city in the United States, in a great way, and Los Angeles is probably more similar to most of America.

Los Angeles survives on that which is unpredictable. The unexpected courses through its very veins.

One nice thing that I have discovered about Los Angeles is the enthusiasm with which people dress.

Growing up, I had one very specific idea of what a wedding should be, and that was the wedding of Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp in 'The Sound of Music.'

It's interesting because with a lot of people who I've met in comedy, it seems not to matter what your background is. In terms of formal schooling - I feel like that's a nineteenth century term - but in terms of where you went to high school or college, or wherever, all that really is irrelevant, I have found, in comedy.

I've never had prejudice against me because of being a woman in comedy, I've never felt any sort of unfairness because of that - but I do think it is naive to think that it doesn't exist.

My painting teacher in high school used to say, 'I can't paint like I want to, but through practice I'll get better.' But I don't think that's true. I think sometimes you just can't paint.

I guess it's easier to think badly and then be pleasantly surprised.

I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I'm performing.

In Los Angeles, people dress with the deep and earnest hope that people will do nothing but stare at them.

I wrote comedy sketches in college.

I want to be a morning-talk-show host. I love Kelly Ripa's job. She gets to live in New York and has this amazing job hosting a talk show.

I think New Yorkers are some of the friendliest people in the world, but it just comes out in a different way. In a way where they're swearing at you.

I always have ice cream in the house. I have a bowl of it, and then a bit more. One of the greatest pleasures in my life is going back and getting a second half-bowl. The first bowl is just the prelude.

I'm a little disappointed in myself because before getting pregnant, I resolved to do all these things during my pregnancy to nurse a healthy pregnancy. And so I'm finding in these final weeks that I didn't do any of them.

A man's face is not a rich person's lawn; you are wasting resources if you devote that much energy to trimming your beard, sideburns, or mustache just so. Nor is a man's face the woods; there need not be the tangled weeds, shrubbery, and wildlife/eggs benedict that get ensnared in them.

I am fully anticipating that something - perhaps many things - will not go according to plan on our actual wedding day. If some of the flowers are wilted, or there aren't enough vegetarian meals, or the priest calls me the wrong name, I will embrace these errors.

I have given myself dork shivers so many times that I would be an outright liar if I characterized myself as anything other than a pure, utter, and unadulterated dork.

In the back of my head, I always thought it would be great to become an actress on a sitcom.