Rainn Wilson Quotes

There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.

I know what I look like - a weird, sad clown puppet. I'm fine with that.

Well, Dwight was born to be No. 2 and I don't think he would know what to do as a leader. But he loves following. He would have made a great fascist.

The great thing about 'The Office' and it being single-camera and the documentary style is that it's mostly a comedy, but 10 percent of it is, we get to show the existential angst that exists in the American workplace.

I joined an acting class in my junior year in high school. I'd always wanted to try it.

There's like ten minutes when it's like, 'Okay, wait, who is this guy again?' And then, you know, I just put on the calculator watch and the glasses, and just be all, you know, inappropriate. And then it just works out fine.

This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet.

Music is universal too. Even deaf people like to dance, love rhythm, and can kind of pick it up.

I found it very easy to transform into creeps and weirdos and losers and goof-balls, and I'm happy to play eccentric kinds of characters, and I have a great affinity for the outsider, but I definitely am about expanding my range as well.

I don't want to sound pretentious, but I love art, I like to go to museums, and I like to read books.

I was a total dork in high school.

If you cloned JFK and Abraham Lincoln and made them president it wouldn't matter. Our system is just too corrupt and too broken. I think that science is corrupt and broken. I think health and nutrition. I think the economic systems, the international relations, the environment, everything, the engines of everything are broken.

When I was a little kid I loved the Marx brothers and discovered Monty Python when I was 10 or 11-years-old. I used to take a tape recorder and hold it up in front of the TV to record entire episodes to play over and over again, so that I could memorise it.

Absolutely father knows best, always do what your fathers say, and if you can't find one then just ask me, I am a father and I know best.

The Baha'i celebrity, or the Belebrity, is a character actor with a big head playing an annoying creep on a TV show.

Creativity is absolutely for everyone.

I firmly believe this. I think if you're the driest accountant with the plastic pocket pen protector it's in how you interact with the world. There is artistry in everything that we do and there is expression in everything that we do.

What's interesting is the show allows for the awkward pauses to be captured, which makes it stylistically unique, especially for American audiences.

I think we're the only jokeless show on television.

I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human.

In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.

The great challenge working on this show for me is wearing polyester all day long and having the worst haircut known to man at the top of my head and sitting under fluorescent lights. That is America, people. Polyester, bad haircuts, under fluorescent lights.

I think Dwight loves being number two.

I don't think he has any desire to be number one. He wants to be number two no matter where he goes. It's like Avis. 'We try harder.' That's Dwight.

Scotland is the Canada of England!

I like being a Baha'i who has an out-there sense of humor.

God gives us talents and faculties, and making people laugh is one of mine.

I came to realize I did believe in God.

I couldn't conceive of a universe without someone overseeing it in a compassionate way.

I think definitely people know me from playing creeps and weirdos, and I'm definitely looking to expand my range.

Some of the most morally conscious, kindest, most compassionate people are in the entertainment industry, people who want to affect the world and make it a better place through telling human, heartfelt stories.

We've seen that there are a lot of people out there - teenagers in Topeka, housewives in Long Island, millionaire Internet start-up moguls - that all want to connect with each other about what it is to be human.

When I grew up in Seattle, by the way, in the 70's, it was a fishing village.

There were loggers and fishers and my dad had a sewer company and it wasn't the way Seattle is now. Culturally, it was very different back then.

I want to keel over on stage playing King Lear at age 99 or something like that.

The camera adds ten pounds and ten thousand dollars.

People are flawed. I like peaking into their flaws. The way to humanize them is not to play them in any general way, but to make them very specific. If you make them specific, they have hopes and dreams and loves and vulnerabilities and quirks and you get to know them and you get to appreciate them.

I like playing misfits, I like playing oddballs, I like playing characters with rough edges.

I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player."

And I want to find a way to be of service to humanity.

I think that's crucial. So want to be an artist and a servant, a humanitarian, and I want to play goofy weirdoes.

I think that doing comedy and playing Dwight is a service.

Not to get grandiose about it, but I have a talent for playing oddball characters and I can make people laugh and that can help bring families together and people will really enjoy it and it puts a smile on their face and I think that is a really great thing.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

I love being an actor, and I don't want to be a spokesman for anything, I don't want to do anything crazy or fancy like that. I just love playing characters and getting paid for it, and that's what I want to do till the day I die.

I definitely have been known to be grossly insensitive in many different ways, you can ask the wife. To speak without a filter sometimes and not being able to edit myself with much sensitivity.

We live in a really sexist culture, that's got to be addressed.

And a really homophobic one. And all those things need to be addressed and looked at.

Some of the biggest movie stars in the world are essentially characters.

A guy may wear a suit and have a high-paying job and appear very mature, but essentially, he's a 14-year-old boy.

The making of art is no different than prayer.

I'm lucky to have a wife and a child that keep me grounded.

I think that charity is a tricky thing, because a lot of times, people equate charity with handouts. I don't believe in handouts.

Not everything is a lesson. Sometimes you just fail.

(In) most cop shows, every cop in the squad speaks exactly the same and the same kind of short clipped film noir-ish talk.

You meet people in Hollywood that are famous, and you're not sure what they got famous for.

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

I play Dwight. That is just much me being of service and worshiping as if I'm on my knees in some temple somewhere or bowing my head in prayer to God in some way. It's really all just the same thing.