Michael Ian Black quotes:

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.

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.

The thing that I think is the most important is taking moments to express your appreciation to your partner. A thank you or a quick kiss can go a long way toward affirming your relationship and commitment to each other. That's not hard to do even when you're juggling insane careers and three kids.

Separation is the worst. There's no good way to deal with it, other than to get on the phone and do Skype and try to visit.

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.

Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don't ignore that critic but don't give it more attention than it deserves.

I don't watch that much comedy. I think it's professional jealousy. That and a lack of support for my community.

Best strategy for a first date is to ask her questions. Just keeping asking her questions about herself. Her life, her job, her friends, her taste in movies and music and everything. People mostly just want to talk about themselves, so let her do that.

There is no word for feeling nostalgic about the future, but that's what a parent's tears often are, a nostalgia for something that has not yet occurred. They are the pain of hope, the helplessness of hope, and finally, the surrender to hope.

So my reaction to hearing this corny-ass, horrible song ["With Arms Wide Open" by Creed] is violent, uncontrollable, sustained weeping.

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.

Wish I could, through my own financial prestidigitation, transform a dollar bill into two, or two million. It is an awesome and mysterious skill.

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.

I am not a music snob. If anything, my musical taste is bad by any critical standards.

I don't think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. Until about the age of eleven or twelve, I had zero interests other than trying to steal gumballs from supermarket gumball machines.

All the work that I do, whether or not it ends up being commercially successful or not, feels like the most important thing to me while I'm doing it. I try to take something away from every project, and so they all feel like milestones for one reason or another.

I honestly believe you can never tell if a relationship is going to last. In my own marriage, which is going on 14 years, I don't think of it as 'I'm going to be with this person forever.' Instead, I think of more like, 'I'll probably be with this person for the next six weeks. Then I'll re-evaluate.'

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.

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.

There's this misconception that comedy and music go together. They don't. Comedians can't compete with rock stars; they're just not on the same level. Rock stars will always be cooler. They will always get more girls.

I actually don't know anyone who wants to be famous for fame's sake, at least not anyone I respect. But you need to have a certain amount of power in order to be able to do what you want.

I am a poker player, but I am not a good poker player. My favorite game is seven card stud, but I'll play hi/lo, Hold 'em, Razz, etc.

Write more thank-you cards, but draw fewer swastikas on them.

I take it for what it is, and 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.

Everybody has something they love to do. Do that thing.

The global business climate is likewhatever, dude.

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.

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.

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.

Marriage felt like a fading American institution, as relevant to me as the Elks Club. Plus, I considered myself punk rock, and punk rockers don't believe in boring societal conventions like marriage. We prefer boring societal conventions like punk rock."

Internet fame is like regular fame only without all the annoying 'money' and 'power.'

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.

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.

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.

My first real break was when my college sketch troupe, The State, was asked to contribute pieces for a new MTV show called 'You Wrote It, You Watch It.'

Let me tell you, the life of a C list celebrity is pretty sweet. If I want to go to an Applebee's, all I have to do is, literally, walk in the door. They seat me as soon as the other people ahead of me are seated.

Well, I think my stand-up is often kind of visual. Not like Carrot Top visual, but visual.

I think people hate me pretty much across the board, which is nice. I mean, it's a pretty evenhanded loathing among a certain amount of the critical population, which used to be about 80 percent. So now I've gotten to the point where I just don't worry about it that much. It used to be very upsetting, now it's only mildly upsetting.

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.

Nothing is more satisfying to me than sitting in a dank room, hunched over a single flickering candle like Ebenezer Scrooge, and watching my ledgers fill themselves with ink.

I feel like my career has been a series of glowing obituaries.

I have a good family and I like to be home with them. The older I get, the lazier I get, and the more content I am to sit at home and eat string cheese.

Corporations do a lot of things well, but not run nations, for obvious reasons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hosting a show, even a talk show or a game show, there's so much business you have to conduct. There's so much guiding you have to do.

I can be a snarky Asshole, or I can be sort of mentally impaired. It's very hard for me to just be normal human being.

I don't chase after things, but I put forward the effort and know the rest of it is out of my hands.

I don't necessarily self-identify as a writer, 'cause it implies a certain level of intelligence.

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.

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.

I hope you die.... P.S. If you do die, I'm going to go to the funeral and finger your corpse.

I imagine there's a level of narcissism that goes into thinking you're enough.

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.

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.

I take my coffee the same way I take my women: Strong, black, and proud.

I think in doing stand-up there are no rules and there's no architecture.

I think people hate me pretty much across the board, which is nice.

I think people just love to win.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

I'm not sure what it would mean to have "made it." Made what? Yes, I can make a decent living in show business, so if that's the criteria, then I've made it. But that doesn't feel that important to me. The stuff that matters to me are the new challenges. I know that sounds hokey, but it's true.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shuffling really isn't something you should be doing on your deathbed.

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.

Super excited about things I'm going to do; never excited about things I'm actually doing.

That's been my fear all along. That I'm not enough, and I still don't trust at all that I am.

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.

The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever I write I publish. Because that's where the money is.

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.

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.

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.

Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don't ignore that critic, but don't give it more attention than it deserves.

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.

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.