Directing was a great experience, but it's terrifying to have the responsibility of carving up the other actors' performances.

If there was ever someone to look up to, it's Tom Hanks.

I held down as many jobs as I could find, from being a waiter to working at a yoga studio and as a ticket-taker at a small theater company - anything that would allow me to go out and do auditions.

I've fallen in love with shows like 'Homeland' and 'The Wire.' And I think 'The Office' is in a category like that.

For me, there are worse things than being pigeonholed as the nice guy.

Trophies and medals have never meant much to me. I've had amazing experiences, which let you feel like you've accomplished something.

I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.

When people ask if I'm going to be sad that 'The Office' is over, they don't even understand the depth of that question for me. It's an era of my life. No one would have known my name if it wasn't for the show.

I went to Dave Eggers with this idea of doing a movie about a guy going through some sort of Frank Capra-esque journey.

I got fired from being a lunch-shift bartender because I had a reading of a play.

The way the British 'Office' got away with being so dark was that it only had 13 episodes. There are realistic elements that people obviously enjoy, but they don't necessarily want to relive the trials and tribulations of their average work day.

The real drawback when you write with a partner is that where you want it to go and where they want it to go is similar, but not exactly lined up, and that's where it's going to lead you into trouble.

Hearing anyone think that I'm any form of sexy or handsome is incredibly flattering.

I know I'm guilty of and I think a lot of people are guilty of sort of getting starry-eyed with love and sort of looking over the bad things and keep going and you don't really prepare for how much work marriage really is.

I used to make fun of my friends who had BlackBerries. And I know that the expression CrackBerry has been going around, but now I fully understand it. I'm actually addicted to a piece of machinery, and that's really embarrassing.

This is the time for me to step out and show that I don't just want to play the nice guy roles, and I think I'll find out what my limits are.

No matter what a guy says, if he shows up at all the places you're at, he's hooked.

Sadly, I'm one of those people who emotionally puts things off and then gets caught very blindsided at the end.

'The Office' is not one of those things you move away from. I don't want it to go away.

I credit NTI, truthfully, with everything as far as where my head is and what my goals are and dreams are. I would say it was probably one of the most influential moments of my life, being there.

Bizarrely, on movie sets, they don't really dig it when you look in the camera, which is a bizarre fact.

I had never taken acting at Brown to be the beginnings of a career. I always did it just for fun.

I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

I remember when I saw 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' I wanted to go out and direct a movie right there on the streets of Manhattan. Unfortunately, you can't without permits.

To me, it seems like both 'Brief Interviews' and 'The Office' deal with characters that see themselves differently than the world sees them.

It's definitely particular to each situation, but whether it is a long history or someone that you're intimidated by or someone that you didn't think you ever had a shot at, at the end of the day, I think we're all living through high school, every day.

It's tough to live in New York and be in the business.

My favorite water cooler topic is fantasy football. I used to make fun of friends for doing it and now I'm obsessed.

I'm not trying to be the triple threat guy. I'm still working on this one threat; acting.

I've always loved where my dad came from and the ideals that he instilled in me.

If you did go to high school and then college, there's definitely a solidarity with someone that is from your hometown and knows your mom and all that stuff.

My parents and my brothers and their wives are incredible and formed me as a person long before I got to Hollywood.

People aren't throwing themselves at me, but I also don't go out very much. Like, when I do go out, it's for breakfast, so it's a little hard to throw yourself at me during breakfast.

Luckily, I have two of the coolest parents around. They're so open about having any and all experiences, so they never hindered us in any way by categorizing or judging anything.

A good part's a good part. You can play serious and funny moments with a well-written role.

I love feeling strong. You pick up your daughter with ease while everyone else makes a little grunt when they pick up their kids.

I think we all get into situations where we don't know how to proceed, and those are really the scariest moments that we have, but that's also what makes us 'grow up' and learn a lot about each other.

I've always loved those movies where somebody really wants something, and then the thing they want is right in front of them.

I always stay with my parents. When you come home, you gotta do that. It's weird to be like, 'Hey, I'm at a hotel. Drive 20 minutes to see me, and we'll have dinner.'

In a democracy, people tend to get the kind of government they deserve.

Hospitality is central to the restaurant business, yet it's a hard idea to define precisely. Mostly, it involves being nice to people and making them feel welcome. You notice it when it's there, and you particularly notice it when it isn't. A single significant lapse in this area can be your dominant impression of an entire meal.

Celebrity farmer. Now there's a phrase that should be an oxymoron. There are farmers on both sides of my family, and I can attest that the overlap between the way farmers live, work and think, and celebrity culture, is exactly 0%.

People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where the police strut around in jackboots; it's a country where the police can do anything they like. Similarly, a security state is one in which the security establishment can do anything it likes.

It doesn't thrill me to bits that the state has to use the tools of electronic surveillance to keep us safe, but it seems clear to me that it does, and that our right to privacy needs to be qualified, just as our other rights are qualified, in the interest of general security and the common good.

Often, in horror films, the single most effective device for building a sense of scariness is the soundtrack: the clanking of chains, the groaning of off-stage ghouls, the unmistakable sound of a cannibal rustic firing up a chainsaw.

To make three films out of one shortish book, they have to turn it into an epic, just as 'Lord of the Rings' is an epic. But 'The Hobbit' isn't an epic: its tone is intimate and personal, and although it's full of adventures and excitement, they're on a different scale to those of the bigger book.

In the world where people with money overlap with restaurants and try to work out how to make more money, one of the things they talk about is the desire to find 'the new pizza.' This means a new mass-market product that can be made quickly and eaten both on the premises and as a takeaway.

There is a moral underpinning to economics. And the kinds of questions that it asks and the kinds of solutions it proposes do seem to me to belong in a more humanistic framework.

I grew up in Hong Kong, and London used to seem very gray: the sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the food was incredibly gray - the food had, like, new kinds of grayness specially invented for it.

I don't think quantitative easing is deliberately misleading, but I do think it's suspiciously bland and reassuring. It doesn't sound like anything big, experimental, scary and strange - which is what many economists think it is.