We have such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choice. Do you want to hike in the Alps? There are 300 pairs of shoes you can order within the next 10 minutes. You have your choice of everything.

Love one another, make something with your hands, and exalt the farmer.

When I first met with agents, they said, "Okay, you're going to play plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers. Go."

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."

I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.

If you're an original thinker, you are going get told 'no' a lot, and you have to be able to hear 'no' many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.

I have a very healthy growth of both head and facial hair. People always want to attribute further superhuman powers to me. It's funny the way the audience really seems to want me, Nick the actor, to exhibit the same machismo as Ron Swanson.