Top 174 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Carell - Page 3

My parents had a certain resolve to them that I don’t see as so prevalent today. Through good times and bad, they were committed to one another. Their relationship wasn’t something to be constantly examined or picked apart.

Do not to be as shy around girls, because they're probably just as shy and just as scared as you are.

We are all facing the end one day or another. I say, live a good and prosperous life, make sure your choices count, make them count.

Is it true that if you don’t USE it you LOSE it?

I was sort of traumatized by girls in the third grade. Because there was a girl in my third grade class I had a crush on. I bought her a box of Valentine's Day chocolate. And I put it in her cubby with a note that said something like, "I am deeply in love with you, Your Secret Admirer." And I didn't sign my name.

I find things funny that aren't self-aware. That don't know they're funny, and I think the same can hold true for drama. If you think you're in this tragedy and you play it for tragedy, there's a self-awareness there that I think takes you out of watching it and I believe it cuts both ways.

I don't do anything to try to change people's perceptions of me. I tend to think that's sort of an ego driven thing.

One person with the ability of half a person doing the work of four people.

Because I went from the Daily Show where I was a fake news guy on a fake news show to Bruce Almighty where I played a news guy to Anchorman where I played a news guy, now I'm...yeah, I tend to gravitate towards suits.

In my role of agent for Miss Hathaway, I would like to say that she does not answer questions relating to this subject.

Being a leading man... that's like saying I want to be astronaut. That's not going to happen.

I don't want to be pretentious about, "yes, I need to move in to the more dramatic roles and express myself and prove to everyone that I'm capable of doing it," it really isn't that, I think that's a bad reason to choose roles. It's more like, who would I be working with and would they be fun to do and entertaining to watch, is it an interesting story or character.

I can get lazy. I don't think I'm a very driven person. When I have work, I work very hard. But when I don't work, I really don't do anything. I could easily just fade away.

I think ultimately, when you believe somebody is going through a situation and it's either awkward or ridiculous, but you believe it, that can be funny.

High school – those are your prime suffering years. They don’t get better suffering than that.

I’m listening to a lot of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna. A lot of pop female artists. I have to say I’m pretty well-versed in the pop female category.

That's an interesting way to put it: an expectation of who you should be. More often than not, it's described as an expectation of who you are.

For my wife and I, the challenge is to not make every day the best day possible because it's not realistic.

This year, more people will use cocaine than will read a book to their children.

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him.

Everyone always wants new things. Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me the choice is easy.

Well, it might have been if I'd had success earlier in life, but having success that much later meant I was far more grounded when it came. The last few years of my life have just been surreal and after a lifetime of disappointment and heartache and rejection, I still don't believe this is all actually happening. I'm extremely grateful for my success - I just never expect it to last and my motto, if I have one, is just put your head down and do the job.

I'm very fast. I'm like Forest Gump, except ... I am not an idiot!

Make friends first, make sales second, make love third. In no particular order.

The better the person you're with, the better you're going to be because they're giving you so much more.

We always spend the summer together. My wife and kids, we always go back to Massachusetts and spend the summer there near where my wife and I both grew up. I wasn't willing to sacrifice the summer to go elsewhere.

There's very little you could do to prepare to be a correspondent on The Daily Show, because it's not being a journalist, it's not being an actor. It involves elements of both of those things, but they're not required necessarily as job experience. It's helpful if you know how to improvise, but again, not a requirement.

I ate fiberglass insulation. It wasn’t cotton candy like the guy said… my tummy itches.

Well, on a personal level, I would never want to take on a character who didn’t have some redeemable qualities. Even the worst of people, such as Michael Scott in The Office [Carell’s character in the US version of the Ricky Gervais sitcom], have some decent human qualities that you can latch onto.

In my wildest dreams i never thought- well, I never thought I'd work

I play the baritone horn - which is like a mini tuba, and is the least sexy instrument you can choose and I generally say I don’t play one so I don’t have to acknowledge it. I also play fife.

I am always the type of person who is waiting for the other shoe to drop and for it to peter out and end. And if it does that's fine.

I had a friend who, after 25 years of marriage, found himself trying to date again, and it was completely different. Everything had changed, and he had to reacquaint himself. It was funny even talking to him about it. For someone who has been out of the loop, it’s a different world.

Once I moved to Chicago and started trying to get acting jobs, I just tended to book more things that were comedically based than anything else. I never had the preconceived notion, "I will be a comedic actor." I just thought, "I'll go into acting and see what kind of work I can get."

An office is a place to... live life to the fullest. To the max. To... an office is a place where dreams come true.

It's a very familiar type of place where people either go to their house on the lake or they get together in different places. This was a normal, relatable place that I think a lot of people have in their childhood.

It's nice to find people who live on the fringe, finding one another and she's just unrelentingly funny.

People know where romantic comedies are going. It's not brain surgery to figure out the end of a romantic comedy.

Yes. It is true. I, Michael Scott, am signing up with an online dating service. Thousands of people have done it, and I am going to do it. I need a username, and I have a great one. 'Little Kid Lover.' That way people will know exactly where my priorities are at.

I don't ever want to take a part in order to prove that I'm capable of doing something. It's all based in doing stuff that's interesting or working with people who would be fun to work with.

I’m not good with pickup lines or flirting. I don’t have that kind of self-confidence or natural charisma.

I would like for my kids to at least have some familiarity with who I am: "It's the man from TV!"

Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.

As a parent, all you want is for your kids to be safe but you don’t want to be over-protective and so you know that at some stage, they’re going to make their own mistakes and get hurt emotionally when all you want to do is protect them from that.

I am a patriot and I want to see this country [the USA] soar again.

[And on going from character to leading actor] I don't approach anything differently; I just approach it as a character. I'm always astounded at the fact that I've ever played a leading character in anything [Laughs]. And my wife concurs with that, frankly. She always thought I would be, at best, the wacky neighbor on a sitcom, so this is all just a surprise and a joy.

As soon as you start to talk about your own mannerisms, you are screwed. Because if you are aware of your own mannerisms, or beyond that even what makes any one thing funny to people, I really ascribe to that that if you start deconstructing it too much, it is immediately not funny.

I am happily married, and I think I was lucky that success came a little later in my life. It's difficult to handle all the attention when you are a young gun.

When you approach it, and I hate sounding like the pretentious actor, but yeah, I think you have to find things within the character that are likeable, or at least human, and not to go at it with any sort of predetermined notions as to what that character is.

I think there's a little bit of idiot in everybody and I think some people cover it better than others but I think I am very much a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Some people just derive great joy from making other people laugh. And I do, but I don't feel like I need to do it 24 hours a day.

They love 3-D. It's fun to watch a movie in 3-D with your children, or with a group of children, because, from time to time, you see little hands reaching up to grab things that they think are right there. It's remarkable and it does, obviously, add another dimension, literally, to the movie.

People just like to be on camera. There's a huge desire to be in front of the camera, and once there, people will say and do almost anything. It's sort of a drug, and I think people get addicted to it.

It's harder when people are playing along, because it's just not as funny. They're trying to be funny, and it sort of cancels out the whole joke.