“Every job is an opportunity to be a better person.”

I went to Julliard and we did a lot of mask work there, and I remember thinking in class, ‘When am I ever going to use this?

Maybe I’m naive, but I subscribe to the idea that nobody is actually making strategic decisions about their career. Trying to do that would be like playing three-card monte on Canal Street.

I’d consider myself a flailing comedy writer.

I only play projects with weird interpretations of presidents.

You learn history in school, and you have a reverential feeling toward it. But by being irreverent, it feels current.

I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer for awhile there. I had a good teacher at Interlochen, this arts’ academy in Michigan, who taught me the importance of storytelling, and I really responded to that. It seemed like a long shot, but I always play the long odds.

I’m just looking for things to steal [on working with great actors]. It’s like going back to acting school. When you’re around people that do it well and you get your head out of your ass, you can really learn something.

You never can take for granted that you have a job.

You never know when you’ll have a bad idea for a worse joke.

The vampire craze is kind of fascinating. We’re interested in the idea of immorality and I think we’re drawn to people or creatures who can give in to those base impulses and just be bad and not feel bad about it.

People are still people, and they make their decisions based on their life experiences and their beliefs. You really can’t divorce the two. It’s important to fight against stereotypes and oversimplifications in very complex people.

Even the greatest actors have had dry spells where they’ve wondered if they were going to work again.

You think of George Washington, this man who was larger than life, and in some ways he was. But at the same time, he’s just a person.

Don’t trust somebody that don’t have a troubled period.

The place I feel most at home is when I have health insurance. I really don’t care how I get it, whether it’s on film, or television or waiting tables, you know?

You know, 1% of us is in the armed forces, protecting the other 99, and they’re all volunteers.

I’ve never felt my job was to win basketball games – rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.

The only thing I would change is during the summer – when I was working my summer job, if I was smart, I would have taken flying lessons at Auburn.

The really authentic thing about humor is that anyone can pretend to be serious. Anyone who’s ever had a job – in fact, we’re pretending to be serious now, more or less.

People have a pathway to citizenship right now: It’s to abide by the immigration laws, and if they have a family relationship, if they have a job skill that allows them to do that, they can obtain citizenship.

Retrain, rehire into higher paying and value-added jobs? That may be the political myth of the modern era. There aren’t enough of those jobs.

Elections have consequences,’ President Obama said, setting his new policy agenda just three days after taking office in 2009.

I was so happy and content with in life playing music. Music was always my first job and my day gig was my second job.

Your job as CEO is to be the fastest person of the company.