Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are times in your life when you feel like the dumbest man on the planet and you’re insecure about something, and then there are times where you feel like, “Hey, I’m a pretty smart guy and I’m pulling it together …”
I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem.
I think I, like most people, enjoy a wide variety of music. Yeah, I like some country stuff - old country stuff. I might not enjoy Billy Ray Cyrus or anything. But, you know, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, early Johnny Cash - absolutely.
I'm always in the elements, it seems like it's pouring rain on me a lot and there's crowds of people pushing me around, and it feels very real. Which is great as a actor, you don't have to come up with too much of it. I'm always amazed.
I'm not going to say that the other people I worked with weren't artist. They were all very great, very talented people, but I think Guillermo [del Toro] will go down in cinematic history as one of our more talented, visually brilliant directors.
I went to college to be a jock and to play on the baseball team. And then, I got cut and realized that that was it for that. I was really small. The other guys were really big, on that team. I was a bit of a theater nerd, and I was an art history major.
I had my own insecurities, which a lot of my comedy would come from, about not being able to live up to their academic expectations. Acting out those insecurities was a way of confronting them, like, “Let me just lean into being a guy who can’t read or write.”
When it came to hip-hop... I don't know. Maybe I was insecure. You know, this is the early '90s. If you were a white guy, and you were rapping, that wasn't as accepted yet. I was scared of the quiet Northeast suburbs, so I couldn't embrace my full rapper self.
I find that the majority of the year, I don't spend acting. I spend it either writing or editing or producing, or putting things together. So it's as shocking as it is tragic. I really enjoy it. It's a valuable skill set. I certainly feel like more of a grownup.
I don't think you should just do what makes you happy. Do what makes you great. Do what's uncomfortable and scary and hard but pays off in the long run... Let yourself fail... And pick yourself up and fail again. Without that struggle, what is your success anyway?
It is not elegant to gnaw Indian corn. The kernels should be scored with a knife, scraped off into the plate, and then eaten with a fork. Ladies should be particularly careful how they manage so ticklish a dainty, lest the exhibition rub off a little desirable romance.
There are certain episodes that on the page I thought, "Oh boy, this is going to be the funniest episode." And there are other ones that went in, fingers crossed, saying, "Oh well, let's hope something good comes out of it." Oftentimes, those ones wind up being the best ones.
You're responsible for your own character to a degree, because when it comes to the final draft of the script, you might say, "Well, I think maybe I could add this here, add that there." But I find that I write just as well for the other characters as I do for myself. I think.
You cannot let a fear of failure or a fear of comparison or a fear of judgment stop you from doing what’s going to make you great. You cannot succeed without this risk of failure. You cannot have a voice without the risk of criticism and you cannot love without the risk of loss.
Never trust a man whom you know to have acted like a scoundrel to others, whatever friendliness he may profess to feel towards yourself, however plausible he may be, or however kindly he may behave; be sure that, the moment he has anything to gain by so doing, he will "throw you over."
Obviously, comedy, or art in general, or television, or whatever you want to call it's all subjective. But I do like to know what people are thinking. I don't know how long I'll keep doing that. As it goes on and on, I might become more fearful of it. For the time being, I'm not opposed to reading what people write.
I'm really into everything. Something I've been asked throughout the years I've done the show is, "What kind of music are you into?" I find that to be a bizarre question, because it implies there are people out there that are only into one specific kind of music. But I think I, like most people, enjoy a wide variety of music.
My wife is from Laurel, Mississippi, and she has a lot of relatives down in Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport, Louisiana. We go down there a lot. We got married in New Orleans. She has a cousin who introduced me to swamp pop, which is sort of zydeco/Cajun music with a little uptempo pop swing. Now I'm a big zydeco fan, I'm a big swamp-music fan.