People are afraid that they’re going to upset somebody on top, and so there’s a real sense of, I’ve got to be quiet, I don’t want to be fired.
People keep referring to me as a standup, and that just doesn’t sit well with me because a lot of my friends are standups and they’re brilliant at writing jokes, and I’m not.
I learned as a young man that I don’t write jokes, but that I can deliver more mundane material and get a laugh. I call myself a humorist.
No one will ever ask me to sing because it’s beautiful. My secret is hiding my musicianship behind humor.
I’m always pleased that I managed to stay out of jail throughout my tenure in Chicago.
If I put down my tweeter machine for a minute, I actually can communicate with people. As an aside, astonishingly, I just started doing Twitter.
When I use weed creatively, I’m much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.
I won’t read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.
I always call performing live “giving the people the medicine,” because when you’re engaged in it, you can feel the sort of soul magic being exchanged between the performer and the audience.
If you always have something in your life that you’re trying to improve upon, then every day you have a reason to get out of bed, and you have a reason to achieve something and feel good.
I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that’s what has led us to this place where, as we’ve developed technology.
Let’s just say I can never be cast again after Ron Swanson. Then I have a life of theater and woodworking and my wife to look forward to, and that doesn’t make me anything but very happy.
The fact that I have a job that people even watch is an incredible gift.
My education began in theater school, and it continues to this day. I just continued learning to be a better performer.
When I first met with agents, they said, “Okay, you’re going to play plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers. Go.”
I come from the theater, where I got into acting because I love transforming. I love nothing more than to be unrecognizable.
A lot of people find themselves in the entertainment business – or perhaps society steers them toward it – because they’re beautiful.
When we think of an actor, we think of a tanned, frosted-tipped, model-looking guy. We don’t think of a plumber.
It’s hard to swallow when people say, “Oh my God, you’re a master of something.” I say, “No, I’m actually a student of that. I could turn you on to websites for 25 masters, and you’ll quickly see that I am their disciple.”
I don’t get nominated, and I have to say, I’ve probably gotten the greatest mass of press in my life through not getting nominated. It’s definitely been a winning situation as far as I’m concerned.