Michael Ian Black Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 global business climate is likewhatever, dude.

The thing about narcissistic people is that they don't think they're being narcissistic.

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."

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'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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I think people just love to win.

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.

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 take my coffee like I take my women... strong... black... and proud.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.