Top 54 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Shalhoub

I don't look as handsome in Men in Black 2 as I did in the first one.

I started out in the theater when I was a young actor, so I've always tried to move from one medium to the other.

People change all the time.

I am an actor. I try to do different things.

It was never really one of my goals to gain tremendous amount of celebrity or make a tremendous amount of money necessarily.

All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes.

My father had season tickets to the Packer games, and I have several of those. I have a lot of family that still lives in the Bay Area and in Wisconsin, too. And so, I like to get back as often as I can.

I was one of those people who put too much emphasis on work and career and material possessions, and it took its toll on all my relationships, on my physical health, my emotional and mental health.

Luckily, the public sees me as a character actor.

I come from a really big family, my father was a businessman and what he always instilled in us was to be your own boss. My father built up his business, and he was by no means a rich man, but he figured out how to work four-and-a-half days a week.

I was in my first play when I was 6. My older sister was in a high-school production of 'The King and I.' They needed children for a scene, so she brought me in. I had a costume and a couple of serious lines that got a laugh. I loved the feeling.

I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.

I try to do other characters that are different from Monk, obviously, because I'd like to be remembered for more than just that.

I'm impossible to direct. I couldn't get myself to do anything.

I'm a very sensitive guy!

'Longtime Companion' was really the first movie that I know of that addressed the problem of AIDS. This was back in the '80s that we did this.

I'm drawn to that period, the '50s.

Before I did any television or film, I did years and years of theater. Television and film stuff, even though it went on for a good, healthy number of years, almost felt like a diversion from theater.

My dad was a meat peddler who drove a refrigerated truck. He bought his meat in Sheboygan, Wis., and sold it to stores in the region. He was a terrific salesman. People loved and trusted him, and he never let anyone down.

And Big Night, I think by the end the brothers find that balance, when they touch each other on the shoulder over breakfast and it's understood that what should never have driven them apart almost drove them apart. I think that's a true moment.

'Quick Change' was my first real movie. It was an interesting audition process because there were no lines in the script. Bill Murray's character would say something, and Geena Davis and Randy Quaid would say something, and then it would just say, 'The cabbie speaks.' How do you audition for that?

To my fellow nominees, whoever they are - I'm not that familiar with their work - I just want to say, there's always next year - except, you know, for Ray Romano .

I get the opportunity to play all different ethnicities and not get stereotyped or locked into one. It's been a tremendous advantage, I think.

I went to college on the East Coast in Portland, Maine.

It was really an experience, being my first time directing a movie. The scenes that I was in, Brooke really directed me all the time. And the scenes that both of us were in, Brooke directed those. Come to think of it, Brooke directed most of the scenes.

I've been lucky that even when I was younger, just because of my look or whatever, I was afforded the opportunity or called on to try. 'Can you do this Hispanic character?' 'Can you do this Italian character?' 'Can you do this Jewish-American character?' I just had to develop a facility for their accents.

I worked in the theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts for years and moved to New York and then to Los Angeles.

You make certain assumptions as a parent. And you kind of think, at a certain point, you've figured things out. And then all of a sudden, that person that you raised and nurtured and thought that you knew is someone else completely.

My mom was funny and nutty. I suppose she had to be to survive raising 10 kids. To cope and keep a cap on things, she kept us buoyant and harmonious. She wouldn't let us express anger, which later on landed me in therapy but also made it easier for me to play laid-back, measured roles.

With what's happened in the world the last three years, it's easier to see why it's become popular again to diminish and revile Arabs and Muslims in American popular culture.

My father came to the U.S. from Lebanon in 1920 when he was 8 without knowing a word of English. He traveled to Green Bay, Wis., married, bought a house, and he and my mom, Helen, raised 10 kids. Everything depended on his one-man business driving a truck.

You're not really necessarily the coolest guy in their life. You are a conduit to the really cool people.

I feel like I was born in the wrong time.

I did some acting in high school and then a little more in college, and it just was the thing that I felt that I wanted to do more than anything else. And then I was fortunate enough to audition for and get into Yale Drama School right after college, and I spent three years there.

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater - more theater than anything else - and when I was doing films, that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things.

This business can be very frustrating but there is success story after success story of people who take the bull by the horns. Actors who are frustrated ... [should] do your own project. Find a writer, shoot a movie. It can be done.

It's always a problem with television and with films, you always shoot things out of sequence, so you just take your best stab at every moment. You can't really - you'll drive yourself crazy if you dwell on the negative aspects of it or your shortcomings.

I don't look as handsome in Men in Black II as I did in the first one.

I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people's problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there's sometimes pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves.

I was in a restaurant, and it just struck me, something I'd never thought of before. And it's menus in the restaurant just hit me. I was ordering and I thought, "God, think of all the people who handle these meals day in and day out" and they, I mean you're going to a restaurant, you can be pretty - you can feel secure that they wash the silverware in the kitchen and the linens and all that stuff, but they don't wash their menus, who washes menus? Now, I've got to worry about that for the rest of my life.

Henry Kissinger appeared on Dynasty. Have you had any celebrities outside of the film or acting realm that have said, "You know, I'd love to do a bit part or something," a sports star or a politician or?

I am living proof that uncertainty is vastly underrated and often times a blessing in disguise.

And Big Night, I think by the end, the brothers find that balance, when they touch each other on the shoulder over breakfast and it's understood that what should never have driven them apart almost drove them apart. I think that's a true moment.

Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that's why I have a good, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé.

My ritual it's kind of an involuntary ritual. I lie awake the night before, worrying about award ceremony. Try and think of something to write in case I actually get up there. I write it at the very last minute like either in the car on the way to the ceremony or, you know, in the bathroom before the show starts. It's all of jumbled mess written on a napkin or a piece of toilet paper. That's my good luck ritual. It's just like being in college waiting for the last minute to do everything.

To my fellow nominees, whoever they are - I'm not that familiar with their work - I just want to say, there's always next year - except, you know, for Ray Romano.

I don't want to take too long a vacation, although I do think I need a break. I start to - whenever I take too long a break or don't work a while, all my demons start to resurface, and I go a little nuts.

My only preference is to have a lot of variety and diversity in the material that I work on.

The challenge with all television - all series television as you get into later seasons to give people what they have come to, what they've become familiar with and what the qualities of the shows that they recognize without letting it get staled.

Theres always next year, ... except, you know, for Ray Romano.

I shot Barton Fink in July and moved out to LA that fall. The movie came out in the spring and it was a year before I got Wings.

I'm from a Lebanese-American family. And I've been had lot of contacts and - with Arab-American community, especially Arab-American filmmakers and actors and so forth. It's a community that, a minority that really hasn't been heard from enough. And so many of the stories that are told about Arab-Americans these days are just negative portrayals in the news, but also in television and film. So we're - we set out to try and offset some of those stereotypes.

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things.

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that's why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I'm really - it's what I set out to do as an actor originally.