Michael Ian Black Quotes
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You have to lead, in the case of a game show, a contestant through the architecture of the show. So there's a lot of rules there, literal and implied, that you have to navigate.
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I think writing for anybody helps you order your life. It helps you arrange your emotions and your thoughts and it helps to provide perspective.
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Part of what's exciting to me about my career is the constant looking forward. Whenever I finish one project, I am looking to what's next.
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Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
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Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town.
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My tastes in all things lean towards the arty and boring. I like sports documentaries about Scrabble players, bands that play quiet, unassuming music, and TV shows that win awards. In that way, I am an elitist snob. And proud of it.
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Any time I am involved in something from conception to execution, that's obviously a lot more personal, and I'm going to be more invested in it than something where I just show up for a couple days, shoot, and leave.
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When you're writing something, and you're putting yourself out there, or you're performing and someone comes in and savages that, then of course it feels personal. It doesn't feel like it's just business, because there's no business - it's not like we're conducting business, this anonymous critic and I. It's just that this person is tearing me a new asshole.
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As a game-show host, what I'm thinking and what I'm experiencing doesn't matter. My opinion doesn't matter. So there's a flattened reality to it. It's fun to do. But it's certainly not myself in totality - or even maybe a little bit.
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The thing about narcissistic people is that they don't think they're being narcissistic.
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I was very surprised how many people were earnestly reminiscing about the '80s. It's such a stupid thing to do, like, to be honestly invested in nostalgia. It never even occurred to me to do that.
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If I revise a children's book, if I'm spending three hours on the first draft, I'm probably spending 30 minutes revising it. I mean, come on! But to redo a painting? That's hard work.
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I used to need the character but as I've gotten older I need it less and less - I prefer to play some version of myself. To approach any acting job as me just being me.
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I don't chase after things, but I put forward the effort and know the rest of it is out of my hands.
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That's been my fear all along. That I'm not enough, and I still don't trust at all that I am.
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With stand-up, you can be as freeform as you want to be. You can say what you want, how you want, at any moment without constraint.
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There is something about the human condition. I don't think dogs are like "If only I was a poodle instead of a golden retriever, I'd be totally happy." Dogs are happy with who they are.
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Super excited about things I'm going to do; never excited about things I'm actually doing.
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I think people hate me pretty much across the board, which is nice.
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I'll never admit that I'm an actor, because the next horrible follow-up question is always, "Oh, what have I seen you in?"
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You can't write a children's book that takes more than five or six minutes to read, because it will drive the parents batty. It has to be compact. Nobody thinks about the parents when they write these stupid books. I could write longer children's books, but it would actually be bad if I did.
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I don't watch that much comedy. I think it's professional jealousy. That and a lack of support for my community.
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Internet fame is like regular fame only without all the annoying 'money' and 'power.'
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The illustrators work so much harder on the books than the writers do. I mean, that's so much work doing what they do, and it's terrible for them.