Top 150 Quotes & Sayings by Nick Offerman - Page 3

The first thing I do, after I talk with the director and we agree that I'm going to do the role... My jumping off point is I get a picture of what my 'look' will be. My wardrobe style, my facial hair, glasses and all that kind of stuff.

I'm always pleased that I managed to stay out of jail throughout my tenure in Chicago.

The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."

I'm obsessed with the Victorian era and the British Royal Navy... I'd love to play a troubled sailor or captain or a boatman on a three masted ship.

No one will ever ask me to sing because it's beautiful. My secret is hiding my musicianship behind humor.

I made an executive decision in college when I learned how behind I was in the world of books, films, and music because of my rural upbringing. I really reduced the amount of time that sports took up in my life.I still have some Faulkner to get through.

I don't know what it is on an elemental level, but a beard in general evokes hedonism. It's a more lush personal grooming style. It's more comfortable and cozy; it's less sharp and angular and businesslike. I feel like a beard is more Hobbit-like, even though Hobbits themselves are clean-shaven.

"I don't ever want to try to be a 'cute guy.' I want to be Charles Laughton, or Oliver Reed, or Lon Cheney. That's way more fun for me." And once I flipped that switch, that's another thing I've taken off my shoulders, where I never have to worry about, "Do I look good?"

My family has schoolteachers and librarians, and I think people who teach are probably some of our greatest American heroes. Certainly, underpaid and unsung.

Auditioning for television shows - to find a guy who has a lot of experience as a laborer is a bit of an anomaly. We do exist. I know several other actors who have made their living, instead of a waitress job, framing houses or blacktopping roads.

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.

When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.

Before people figured out I was funny, I got cast quite a bit as either a rapist or serial killer or the guy who catches those people.

Being a man of the theater and a hedonist, I find the idea of building coffins very romantic.

If properly dried and trimmed, New York-style pizza could be used to make a box for Chicago-style pizza. I love a slice when I'm in NYC, but it's like eating a Slim Jim compared with a filet mignon. One slice of Gino's East stuffed sausage pizza is a bigger meal than an entire New York pie.

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.

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.

Doing voice work is more like recording music that people are going to listen to. You're creating an oral experience using whatever bells and whistles you have in your voice, and you can shut your eyes and use your imagination and nobody's going to see if the faces you make don't match the voices you make. That's a lot of fun.

When I got my job on Parks, it was so dreamy, kind of unfathomable. I didn't think a job that excellent could exist for me.

I always drastically changed my look for each role. It's gotten a little tedious in real life, also, because there's no hiding.

I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'

I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.

The ultimate disguise is nothing. Nudity.

I think what makes so many other actors miserable is focusing completely on making other plans. They're obsessed with their haircut and their headshot and their agent, their IMDB profile or whatever.

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.

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."

When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.

I learned in my early years in the theater that I would never become the guy on top. I'll never create a show; I don't have a brain expansive enough to see the whole picture, in a way that would behoove anyone.

The quest for the next key art awards begins with tomorrow's hangover