Steve carell quotes

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

Talking to my wife, we stare at each other, saying, 'How is this happening? Why is this happening? Why now?' It's nothing I ever aspired to.

Maybe the coolest people are the ones who don't care about being cool.

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

I don't want to, I don't plan my career based on what I want people to believe I'm capable of doing. So I just take things that I think might be good or might be fun to do or might ultimately entertain.

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

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.

Oh, I so don't care about the podium at the Oscars. I've stood at the podium at the Oscars and that's close enough. To be a presenter is as close as I need to be.

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.

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

I've thought a lot about success, because it's very strange to me that I've been successful.

Your brain, like your tongue, is a muscle. Practicing thinking by yourself really helps develop your brain, which you need throughout your day. I like to practice my thinking in a darkened room, alone.

Don't underestimate your kids. Don't be condescending, because they're children but they're not stupid.

I've waited my entire life to be busy. Whenever I hear actors complain about being busy, I think, 'shut up.' Because you do, you wait to be successful or to be able to work.

I'd love to do Broadway some day. Before I started doing television I was just a primarily a stage actor, but I haven't done it in a while.

Actors and magicians are both performers and they represent things that are not necessarily who they 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.

There's plenty of room for all sorts of movies and all sorts of comedies, so I never saw that as a competitive thing. I think there's room in the marketplace for everything.

There's such a freewheeling nature to 'Second City,' and the greatest thing about 'Second City' was having a sophisticated audience night after night who appreciated what it was. They knew it wasn't all going to be great when you improvised, so they were very forgiving that way.

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.

I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don't have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it's good for me, it's the perfect way to start the day.

I think anyone loves to play a character that is either evil to a certain extent or has a real definable character flaw. Those are always really fun, and, I think, funny.

Being an action star is all I had ever hoped to be. I ultimately knew I would be an action star.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If somebody takes the parking place you were waiting for, I tend to kind of let it roll off my back. Maybe I'm harboring a lot of something and it will all explode somewhere down the road, but I tend to just let it slide off my back.

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."

You know what Disneyland is known for? The Big Turkey Leg. People walk around with enormous deep-fried turkey legs. Like little kids, three-year-old kids eating these five-pound turkey legs.

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

When you do an animated movie - at least the ones that I've been a part of - you never see any of the other actors. It's all done separately with headphones in a voice booth.

When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into your mind and you put it out there. It's very innocuous. I think it's kind of fun.

I think in most relationships that have problems, there's fault on both sides. And in order for it to work, there has to be some common ground that's shared. And it's not just one person making amends.

Everybody wants to be a Bond villain. That is the coolest. To be able to portray a Bond villain, that is the feather in any actor's cap.

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.

Steve Buscemi is hilarious. He's really, really good with improv.

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 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 don't like to get angry. It doesn't make me feel good. It is very human, but it's also a loss of control, and I like to have that kind of control.

Everyone is flawed and everyone makes mistakes and is culpable.

The best food is in Chicago. There are great restaurants everywhere, from fancy places to burger joints.

I am both a night owl and an early bird. So I am wise and I have worms.

I had a lot of coaches growing up that were very hard on the kids in the name of building character, but it could have the opposite effect on kids.

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.

Reverse psychology is an awesome tool, I don't know if you guys know about it, but basically you can make someone think the opposite of what you believe, and that tricks them into doing something stupid. Works like a charm.

[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.

How did I end up in films with people like Keira Knightley... all these beautiful leading ladies and me - it's kind of shocking.

Is there a God? If not, what are all these churches for? And who is Jesus' dad?

A healthy body means a healthy mind. You get your heart rate up, and you get the blood flowing through your body to your brain. Look at Albert Einstein. He rode a bicycle. He was also an early student of Jazzercise. You never saw Einstein lift his shirt, but he had a six-pack under there.

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

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.

Reading a book, watching a movie, going to a play, it's transporting, and very, very exciting. And to be a part of that, creating things with your imagination, whoa.

You project a version of yourself to the public to protect and insulate yourself a little bit. Actors come up with a version of themselves in order to protect the real person.

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.

If I'd had a great level of success early on, who knows how I would have responded. I might have been a complete jerk.

The ability to compromise and having the ability to laugh at ourselves is huge and works well for me.

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.

My maternal grandma was a tough, tough lady and a stern woman, who lost her husband young and raised six kids by herself. She lived in a mining community in Upstate New York and ran a boarding house for miners. She took care of an entire family and miners who lived in the house as well.

You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?'

I'll do whatever I can do to remain employed. I'm just not precious about doing comedy or doing drama. I never want to do something in order to prove to other people what I can do.

From cheesecake on a stick to meat skewers to deep-fried bananas on a stick - there are no plates anymore. In Los Angeles, everything has become a corn dog. Actually, corn dogs still work. But most other food should be stickless.

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are.

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.

Whenever I'm offered something, I always read the script and meet the director. I still appreciate just being considered.

Goalies almost never get credit for winning a game, but they always get blamed for losing a game.

I don't feel that I have to control every aspect of things that I appear in. You learn a lot performing someone else's writing.

When someone is good, but it doesn't seem like their world will collapse if they don't get the part, it's more appealing. It's like dating someone: You don't want someone who's too into you.

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.

My wife is way funnier than I am. As much as I don't really feel I share a sense of humour with my family, I definitely share one with her - we find the same things funny.

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 don't text, I don't have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven't programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don't even have an earpiece for my cell phone.

Whenever I hear someone describe something as a 'kids movie' or a 'family movie,' it immediately has a negative connotation in my mind because I think, 'Well, as an adult, I wouldn't go see it by myself, because it's purely for children and it holds nothing for me and it's simplistic and it's kind of easy.'

I don't think my kids have to worry too much about me embarrassing them because that's not how I would want to grow up, with wacky dad showing up at school and performing for everyone.

I think when someone who's known for doing drama does a comedy but just tries to be funny, that's a mistake.

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

Everyone said to Vincent van Gogh, "You can't be a great painter, you only have one ear." And you know what he said? "I can't hear you".

Do I want to be feared or loved? That's a good question. I want both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal.

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.

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.

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

In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin' onions and, I'm sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes.

It's not a master plan to do every remake and every recreation of icons. It's just what I've been hired to do.

Anything nice that's said about me is diametrically opposed to who I am.

Fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice ... strike three.

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

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.

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.

You're doing your kids a disservice if they do get everything they want because that's not the way life's going to go, and I think kids have to have some reality.

I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.

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

I don't think something necessarily has to be mean or cynical to represent 'edgy.' I think 'edgy' can mean a lot of different things.

Relationships shouldn't be disposable. If there's something worth saving - not always the case, some relationships are irreconcilable - but if there is something that you determine is worth saving, then try to do that.

Nothing to me feels as good as laughing incredibly hard.

'Anchorman'... is not grounded in anything. There is absolutely no heart to that movie, which I love.

I don't even know if I have kind of a personal, like a take or a mental manual of how I'm raising kids. It's really - I think with everybody, it's just day-to-day and you just try to deal with every situation as they come.

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.

Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it's not like a compulsive need to be liked. Like my need to be praised.

Even the most self-confident people, at one point of their lives, felt like outsiders or felt like they weren't being heard or seen or witnessed in some way.

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.

I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious.

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

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 love my wife dearly, and, therefore, I've never cooked a meal, romantic or otherwise, for her.

Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It's disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter - I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting.

Style advice? Always wear clothes... that are... clean, for starters. An added bonus if it is pressed as well. Unless you are wearing clothes that are supposed to look rumpled.

I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.

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

It's interesting when you're trying to create a character in animation. It's really a communal effort.

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.

My father is Italian, and I never met my paternal grandparents. The family name was Caroselli and it was changed in the mid 50s. I think they wanted to assimilate, which was pretty common, although I love the name Caroselli.

I always feel so pretentious talking about comedy and deconstructing it. It always feels somehow self-centred to talk about any sort of process.

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.

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

For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough.

Like most people, I have painful memories of trying to fit in as a child. I wore, said, and did pretty much what everyone else did.

The only time I set the bar low is for limbo.

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

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.

Instead of telling our young people to plan ahead, we should tell them to plan to be surprised.

If we were meant to read for enjoyment, would God have created television? Read as it was intended - for exercise. The more you read, the more you expand your - what's the word I'm looking for? - your stockpile of words. You must have a stockpile of words that you can pass along to your children for their stockpile.

Different things just strike people differently. And it's so subjective, too. Because what makes one person laugh won't make others laugh. I guess it's kind of checkerboarded.

Everybody should be normal. Everybody should be nice. I think they go hand in hand, and that to me is the default setting.