Michael Ian Black
I take my coffee like I take my women... strong... black... and proud.Collection: Strong Women
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.Collection: Jobs
So my reaction to hearing this corny-ass, horrible song ["With Arms Wide Open" by Creed] is violent, uncontrollable, sustained weeping.Collection: Song
My absolute favorite growing up was Super Friends. The assemblage of so many mighty heroes in one place was, to me, mind-blowing. It was Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, and then sometimes Hawkman and some other, lesser heroes.Collection: Growing Up
I loved Dungeons & Dragons. Actually, not so much the actual playing as the creation of characters and the opportunity to roll twenty-sided dice. I loved those pouches of dice Dungeon Masters would trundle around, loved choosing what I was going to be: warrior, wizard, dwarf, thief.Collection: Character
The global business climate is likewhatever, dude.Collection: Climate
The Atkins' diet is where you eat bacon for six or seven months...and the end result is that you lose weight. Because you're dead.Collection: Seven Months
I hope you die.... P.S. If you do die, I'm going to go to the funeral and finger your corpse.Collection: Funeral
I'm very introverted, so it requires a huge effort for me to put on a smile and extend a hand and accept compliments. I would much rather be insulted than complimented any day.Collection: Hands
Things you never thought were going to turn into something end up being the most important things in your life. You have to learn to not try to control it.Collection: Important
The whole idea of punk rock is that you're dressing yourself in a crazy leather jacket with safety pins and a Mohawk. The idea of being the rebel is a boring societal idea. It's such a type. And that's what I was, without knowing it.Collection: Crazy
The things I care about are the most pedestrian things in the world. I care about good ice cream and being a good dad and a decent husband.Collection: Dad
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.Collection: Stupid
I think people hate me pretty much across the board, which is nice.Collection: Hate
Sometimes the criticism is actually useful and constructive and actually informs what I do, but most of the time, it's sort of mindless, or they're receiving something on a different frequency than I was sending it. They're just not getting what I'm doing, and that's fine.Collection: Criticism
By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Writing
I probably should be thinking of better ideas on how to promote myself, but I don't really spend a lot of time doing it. I really don't know how to promote effectively.Collection: Thinking
Hosting a game show is so bizarre and uniquely its own thing. Anytime I'm hosting something, I try to bring as much of myself to it as I can, but it's always going to be incomplete.Collection: Games
I think in doing stand-up there are no rules and there's no architecture.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Want
My goal is to work. That's the goal of most actors or performers: to work and keep working, and do the best you can, and keep growing and changing, trying to improve your craft.Collection: Goal
I feel no obligation to teach my readers anything, to impart any sort of wisdom, to teach any sort of lesson, to instill any sort of morality. All I'm trying to do is make them and their parents laugh.Collection: Laughing
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Silly
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.Collection: Children
I'm trying to teach my children not to cry. That's the big thing. No crying. Because I think we can all agree that crying is, for the most part, for sissies. If my team loses, I'm going to cry. And I'm going to want my kids to see me crying. Not because I think sports are so important, but because I bet so much money on the game that we'll probably lose the house if my team doesn't win. That's something to cry about.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Couple
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.Collection: Careers
I don't really read children's books or deal with children's books, so I don't have any relationship with them other than my own.Collection: Children
My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong.Collection: Children
There's things I know I'm good at, and those things interest me less and less. I learn a lot more from doing it wrong than I do from doing it right.Collection: Interest
Twitter is about creating whatever persona you want to create and either sticking with it or changing it or evolving it or contradicting it, and I've done all that stuff.Collection: Creating
It's such a deliberate thing to sit down and write a tweet. You're putting yourself out there in a very deliberate way, and over however many tweets, you start to create a character for yourself.Collection: Writing
The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.Collection: Writing
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?"Collection: Actors
It doesn't matter what you're chasing, when you get there you're gonna be like, "Oh, is this all? It kind of sucks."Collection: Matter
Whatever expectations I had for myself, none of them have come to pass. I grew up thinking I was going to be an actor, which I am. But I thought I'd be a very serious sort of Shakespearean guy going from town to town having sex with various Juliets all over the country.Collection: Country
I thought I'd be living a much more bohemian life and be very poor. I never thought I'd do comedy or be married living in the suburbs. Every time I try to plan my life out it just doesn't come to pass, and I think that's a great experience.Collection: Thinking
I never really understood what was expected of me as a man, or how I was supposed to interact with women, but worse, with other guys. I did not relate to them.Collection: Men
All my friends were girls. Then my mom's strident feminism for years where men were thought of as the enemy, I just didn't know what the right way to be a man was.Collection: Girl
If you say "I'm going to be an actor, but I'll get a teaching degree just in case," when things get hard, you'll just be a teacher and that's how you get stuck.Collection: Teacher
I'm enough of an optimist and a patriot to believe that in U.S. you have a lot of opportunity and can do pretty much anything you want in some form. For me, the idea of failure is far preferable to the idea of regret.Collection: Regret
My fear is if I expose myself, not so much that I'll be hurt, but that the reaction will be "Is that all there is? Is that the entirety of you? Because it's boring."Collection: Hurt
That's been my fear all along. That I'm not enough, and I still don't trust at all that I am.Collection: Enough
I imagine there's a level of narcissism that goes into thinking you're enough.Collection: Thinking
As an actor, you can show up on a set and be on a TV show for three or four years, or whatever it is and, by the end of it, you just want to do something else.Collection: Years