Rainn Wilson quotes:

There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.

I think Dwight loves being number two. I don't think he has any desire to be number one. He wants to be number two no matter where he goes. It's like Avis. 'We try harder.' That's Dwight.

I like being a Baha'i who has an out-there sense of humor. God gives us talents and faculties, and making people laugh is one of mine.

I joined an acting class in my junior year in high school. I'd always wanted to try it.

The great challenge working on this show for me is wearing polyester all day long and having the worst haircut known to man at the top of my head and sitting under fluorescent lights. That is America, people. Polyester, bad haircuts, under fluorescent lights.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

The founder of the Mona Foundation actually knew my dad for years, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized I really found the perfect charity. It sponsors schools and educational initiatives all over the planet.

Music is universal too. Even deaf people like to dance, love rhythm, and can kind of pick it up.

I know what I look like - a weird, sad clown puppet. I'm fine with that.

Some of the most morally conscious, kindest, most compassionate people are in the entertainment industry, people who want to affect the world and make it a better place through telling human, heartfelt stories.

My brain is so anxiety-prone, like a pinball machine. If I don't get up in the morning and focus my thinking, my breathing, and my being for about 12 minutes, I'm just a screwball all day long.

Well, Dwight was born to be No. 2 and I don't think he would know what to do as a leader. But he loves following. He would have made a great fascist.

I think we're the only jokeless show on television. I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human.

I'm about as big a star as the Baha'i faith has got, which is pretty pathetic.

Apparently 'The Office' plays in Brazil. Who would've thought that Brazilians would identify with a bunch of pasty white Scrantonians in a paper company? But the Brazilians I've met have really loved the show.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

The great thing about 'The Office' and it being single-camera and the documentary style is that it's mostly a comedy, but 10 percent of it is, we get to show the existential angst that exists in the American workplace.

I really wanted to do something positive on the Internet. I wanted to try to get young people talking about, thinking about, life's big questions-make it cool and OK to wonder about the heart, the soul and free will and God and death and big topics like that, big human topics.

Singing and dancing is not just for the cast of 'Glee'. We can wake up doing both and have it be a natural expression of who we are.

SoulPancake' is a website that I founded with a couple of friends, and it is for exploring life's big questions.

I think God has a tremendous sense of humor.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

I remember being unemployed and walking the East Village streets for many years, constantly checking my voice mail on pay phones, hoping for an audition.

I was this weird misfit guy from suburban Seattle, I never really fit in, and then I became a drama geek, among all the other different kinds of geek that I was growing up, and I found I was pretty good at it.

My body has been making women laugh for the last 20 years and I'm happy to continue to oblige.

Some of the most morally conscious, kindest, most compassionate people are in the entertainment industry, people who want to affect the world and make it a better place through telling human, heartfelt stories."

My mom was an actress in the local Seattle theater doing experimental plays."

You meet people in Hollywood that are famous, and you're not sure what they got famous for.

Well, mostly I just want to be an actor. I love being an actor, and I don't want to be a spokesman for anything, I don't want to do anything crazy or fancy like that.

I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing."

Absolutely father knows best, always do what your fathers say, and if you can't find one then just ask me, I am a father and I know best.

The Baha'i celebrity, or the Belebrity, is a character actor with a big head playing an annoying creep on a TV show.

There's like ten minutes when it's like, 'Okay, wait, who is this guy again?' And then, you know, I just put on the calculator watch and the glasses, and just be all, you know, inappropriate. And then it just works out fine.

I was a total dork in high school.

Dwight is a sad clown. You've seen those paintings of sad clown.

I think that doing comedy and playing Dwight is a service. Not to get grandiose about it, but I have a talent for playing oddball characters and I can make people laugh and that can help bring families together and people will really enjoy it and it puts a smile on their face and I think that is a really great thing.

I play Dwight. That is just much me being of service and worshiping as if I'm on my knees in some temple somewhere or bowing my head in prayer to God in some way. It's really all just the same thing.

In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.

I found it very easy to transform into creeps and weirdos and losers and goof-balls, and I'm happy to play eccentric kinds of characters, and I have a great affinity for the outsider, but I definitely am about expanding my range as well.

If you cloned JFK and Abraham Lincoln and made them president it wouldn't matter. Our system is just too corrupt and too broken. I think that science is corrupt and broken. I think health and nutrition. I think the economic systems, the international relations, the environment, everything, the engines of everything are broken.

I've actually rented Bjork's swan dress. I know that's kind of recycling, but I saw An Inconvenient Truth.

I want to keel over on stage playing King Lear at age 99 or something like that.

When I was a little kid I loved the Marx brothers and discovered Monty Python when I was 10 or 11-years-old. I used to take a tape recorder and hold it up in front of the TV to record entire episodes to play over and over again, so that I could memorise it.

I came to realize I did believe in God. I couldn't conceive of a universe without someone overseeing it in a compassionate way.

I don't want to sound pretentious, but I love art, I like to go to museums, and I like to read books.

I think creative blocks come from people's life journeys. If you don't know who you are or what you're about or what you believe in it's really pretty impossible to be creative.

The bonds we create in the household are the most important and lasting. Savor them; they're sacred.

Scotland is the Canada of England!

And I want to find a way to be of service to humanity. I think that's crucial. So want to be an artist and a servant, a humanitarian, and I want to play goofy weirdoes.

I can relate to someone whose life is falling apart, and they are doing the best to get by, using humor to survive, backstrom really wears his heart on his sleeve and his life is unraveling... I would much rather hang out with that person than a slick procedural detective who has all the answers... it's human, it's frail, it's interesting.

I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly.

What's interesting is the show allows for the awkward pauses to be captured, which makes it stylistically unique, especially for American audiences.

We've seen that there are a lot of people out there - teenagers in Topeka, housewives in Long Island, millionaire Internet start-up moguls - that all want to connect with each other about what it is to be human.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke, the poet.

I think definitely people know me from playing creeps and weirdos, and I'm definitely looking to expand my range.

Ralph Waldo Emerson would definitely be my homeboy.

I think that charity is a tricky thing, because a lot of times, people equate charity with handouts. I don't believe in handouts.

A guy may wear a suit and have a high-paying job and appear very mature, but essentially, he's a 14-year-old boy.

Life is suffering. Life is not resistance to suffering. The point of life is to suffer. This is why we're here: We're here to suffer. I believe in a higher power that compassionately allows suffering for us as a race, to grow and mature.

I have an eight-year-old child, and I literally can't wrap my mind around the kind of grief that must be felt when you lose a child.

I would love to see some comedies about loser women.

(In) most cop shows, every cop in the squad speaks exactly the same and the same kind of short clipped film noir-ish talk.

[Internet] technology, like anything else that mankind creates is a tool and that tool can be used for good or for evil, like a light saber. Technology is supposed to bring people together, streamline things and make life easier and in a lot of ways it does that. However, technology can also disconnect you from other people and break down the social network, the real social network of family and friends and interpersonal communication, and isolate people, make them feel alone, make them feel small. So it's a tool that needs to be used correctly.

A lot of actors are just like la la la - they're never really connected and then they're in the scene and then boom. They're looking you in the eyes and they're just really focused.

Absolutely. I am a father, and I know best. If there's any question, just ask me.

Creativity is absolutely for everyone. I firmly believe this. I think if you're the driest accountant with the plastic pocket pen protector it's in how you interact with the world. There is artistry in everything that we do and there is expression in everything that we do.

Everyone is an artist. Everyone is creative in their own way and that that creativity is a great thing. It's a human thing and it needs to be nurtured and it can help us go down life's path and help us to become deeper, richer, more satisfied human beings.

I am all for controlling guns.

I definitely have been known to be grossly insensitive in many different ways, you can ask the wife. To speak without a filter sometimes and not being able to edit myself with much sensitivity.

I grew up watching comedy. It was among all the geeky things that I did.

I like playing misfits, I like playing oddballs, I like playing characters with rough edges.

I love being an actor, and I don't want to be a spokesman for anything, I don't want to do anything crazy or fancy like that. I just love playing characters and getting paid for it, and that's what I want to do till the day I die.

I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing.

I think a lot of times when people have "creative blocks" and I know my share of friends do as well if they're at just some stuck point. They're not sure what to do with their lives or their writing or their photography or their filmmaking or whatever it is that they're doing. I think the best advice is you have to change your life up completely; to go on a trip, to go spend a year being of service. Be willing to take some major drastic action to get you out of your comfort zone and go inside, not outside.

I think it needs to be with a heart-based wisdom and this heart-based wisdom needs to go hand in hand with science and with social activism and love for our planet and love for our whole human family that spans the whole globe and this may sound very high and mighty or airy-fairy, but it's going to have to go to that or else we're just all going to destroy each other.

I think meditation helps greatly with creativity. If it's a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it's going to shine. It's going to resonate.

I think that actors are terrible communicators as people by and large. I think our tendency is to kind of be self-centered and tune people out and just kind of get really me-focused, so I think communication for actors is a big challenge actually.

I use two million Twitter followers as a tool. The reason I have Twitter is so people can get to know me as a different person other than Dwight. I just realized all of the sudden like everything thinks I'm Dwight. They think that I'm Dwight from the office and that I'm this kind of annoying, difficult, nerdy, creepy guy and they don't know Rainn Wilson - although I'm a little bit nerdy, annoying and creepy. I'm not as much as Dwight Schrute.

I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player."

I was doing great plays. It wasn't changing the world. I was getting good agents and doing film and TV and I wasn't happier. I was like "Wow, there is an unease inside of me." And that led me back on my kind of more spiritual path to the Baha'i faith in a new and fresher way and I came to also understand at that point that there was no difference between being devout and being an artist. There is no difference between creativity and spirituality and philosophy and that is what Soul Pancake, the book, it's about human expression and it's about seeking to transcend.

I was raised to think about philosophy and religious thought and the soul and the spirit of humankind in a different way, also really socially progressive teachings of the Baha'i faith, the equality of men and women, the elimination of racial prejudice, the equality of science and religion, so it was a big cauldron of big ideas in my household. And we were weird and unhappy family, but nonetheless that was a really positive thing that came out of it.

If it's a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it's going to shine. It's going to resonate. You could look inside of yourself and you could have a canvas and you could paint a dot in it, but if that is where your creative purpose is taking you then it needs to be that dot.

I'm a much better listener when I'm acting than I am as a person in real life because you learn as an actor that listening is so important. You have to really key into what the other person you're acting with is saying and how they're saying it and react in the moment to what is going on.

I'm lucky to have a wife and a child that keep me grounded.

I've always been terrible on regular sitcoms with lots of jokes. I don't know how to tell jokes.

I've been through some very dark times in my life and I've been through those very dark times that's affected my world view, the lens that I see people through, so I can relate to that.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time. He was always so frustrated having to work to support the family that I was like, I'm never going to do that. I don't want to just be working a menial job to support my family and dreaming of being an artist. We learn from our fathers in that way.

My mom was an actress in the local Seattle theater doing experimental plays.

Not everything is a lesson. Sometimes you just fail.

Our society is all about focusing on the externals, "These people like me, I'm successful because of these people, they view me as being good" and we need to take that vision and instead of expanding it outwards we need to look inside ourselves.

People are flawed. I like peaking into their flaws. The way to humanize them is not to play them in any general way, but to make them very specific. If you make them specific, they have hopes and dreams and loves and vulnerabilities and quirks and you get to know them and you get to appreciate them.

Some of the biggest movie stars in the world are essentially characters.

The camera adds ten pounds and ten thousand dollars.

The making of art is no different than prayer.

This is one doodle that can't be undid homeskillet.

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

We live in a really sexist culture, that's got to be addressed. And a really homophobic one. And all those things need to be addressed and looked at.

When I grew up in Seattle, by the way, in the 70's, it was a fishing village. There were loggers and fishers and my dad had a sewer company and it wasn't the way Seattle is now. Culturally, it was very different back then.

You have total control of it, and when you're an actor, you're subject to production design and costumes and directors and studio choices and producer choices, but when you're writing it, you're creating your own little world in your head, peopled with your little characters. No one is in there monkeying with it, at least not at first - though they will. With this and the other projects I'm working on, it'll have to be given away, and it'll have to be someone else's property.