As an actor, you can really play the intensity and gravity and seriousness of the moment, and just rely on the circumstances being funny. The joke is kind of the situation you're in, or the way you're reacting to something, as opposed to the characters just saying something witty.

It's a very collaborative environment [making The Office]. We always do takes of how it's scripted, but then we also mix it up a lot too. And it's kind of a crapshoot, you never know which one... I mean a lot of time improvisation doesn't go anywhere and it's not good at all but, so what was written is often times better.

To be totally candid, it was really born out of a panic attack the summer between my sophomore and junior years, when I realized I wasn't going to graduate in four years unless I somehow managed to glue together all the courses I'd taken. That said, I'm really glad I did it, 'cause it was really fun, and I was able to just take whatever the hell I wanted.

No one employed [ chaos] better than Jim Henson, by the way, on The Muppets. He had all these chicken Muppets that just brought in the most glorious chaos to whatever scene they were a part of.

I cannot stress this enough - if you try to install an HDTV in a non-HDTV compatible house, you may tear the space-time continuum.

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

A lot of kind of like the way that Andy [Bernard] talks, you know, the writers pick up on those things - little moments that I inject and then they start to write it in later. It's hard to say if a whole storyline is spun out of an improv. I feel like it has happened on The Office, I just can't think of it.