“All my talent is literally contained in my voice box. Right in there. It doesn’t go anywhere else!”

“Whether it was the Fonz, Mork, Archie Bunker, Ted Baxter, Howard Cosell—any voice from anywhere . . .”

“. . . once I found a conduit, I would do it.”

“My wife knows that I’m starting to get annoyed with people when I start to imitate them.”

“It’s the way I express aggression.”

“Anger and annoyance as inspiration.”

“Comic Book Guy, from ‘The Simpsons,’ is actually based on someone who lived in the dorm room next to mine in college. This guy was insanely annoying. Dude blasted ‘867-5309’ all day long. He had a dry erase board on his door where he kept his lists, which nobody paid any attention to. If he liked you, he’d put you in his ‘Top Five.’ If you told him to turn down his music, he’d say . . .”

“ ‘You’re now No. 2 on my Bad list.’ ”

“We were, like, ‘Dude, nobody gives a shit about your list!’ ”

“I based Nat, the recurring dog-walker character from ‘Mad About You,’ on a guy who I grew up with, in Forest Hills. He was an aspiring actor who would bend your ear for a half an hour about auditions he’d lined up. I ran into him years later in L.A. He said, ‘Hey, I saw you on ‘Mad About You,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’ ”

“But he had absolutely no idea the character was based on him.”

Azaria starts talking about his comedy series, “Brockmire,” in which he plays the show’s eponymous baseball announcer, who is in the midst of a nervous breakdown.

“Jim Brockmire’s voice is a time machine. Especially for sports fans. A direct, visceral connection to a certain kind of nostalgia.”

“Brockmire is the voice of—how do I describe it?—a sort of vanilla-ice-cream, generic baseball voice of the nineteen-seventies.”

“It’s also the voice of the pitch man on TV. You know . . .”

“ ‘Ronco Pocket Fisherman,’ or ‘Batteries not included; act now! Operators standing by!’ ”

“It was so indistinct. Basically boring.”

“A very American, very weird vocal inflection.”

“Not necessarily paternal.”

“But at least avuncular.”

“I mean, how many hours in our lives do we spend listening to these people?”

“I always thought a guy who talked like that, running around being drug-addicted and emotional and having sex and freaking out would be a home run.”

“It took many years of thought and playing around to crack it.”

“Bob Uecker’s Harry Doyle, from ‘Major League,’ was the last iconic announcer character that was actually funny. An ancestor to Brockmire, for sure.”

“Jim Carr, the radio announcer in ‘Slap Shot,’ is another one of the funnier announcer roles. And he wore a plaid jacket, too.

“In his last few years, Vin Scully was getting a little Brockmire-esque in his rants, going way off topic. He’d sit there telling you his opinion on Syria or Brexit—fairly intense things . . .”

“ ‘Breaking ball misses just a bit outside . . .”

“. . . so, England has decided . . .’ ”

“It’s like, ‘What are you talking about, man?’ ”

“Scully was a great example of how you can talk about whatever. As long as the count is coming, the baseball fan will accept.”

“Scully also used to talk about learning when to shut up.”