Latest Rainn Wilson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Dad, Fishing, Different

  Source: mynorthwest.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Needs, Culture, Sexist

  Source: mynorthwest.com

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

  Rainn Wilson

  Culture, Racist

  Source: mynorthwest.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Dark, Views, People

  Source: mynorthwest.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Wife, Different, Filters

  Source: mynorthwest.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Dream, Play, People

  Source: mynorthwest.com

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

  Rainn Wilson

  Character, Rough Edges, Misfits

  Source: mynorthwest.com

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

  Rainn Wilson

  Squad, Noir, Kind

  Source: mynorthwest.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Writing, Character, Creating

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, film.avclub.com. August 19, 2008.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Brother, Kids, Python

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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

  Rainn Wilson

  Comedy, Grew Up, Grew

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Artist, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Crazy, Character, Love Is

  Source: www.pbs.org

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

  Rainn Wilson

  Kings, Age, Want

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Dream, Jobs, Dad

  Source: www.esquire.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Heart, Thinking, Hands

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Thinking, Broken, President

  Source: bigthink.com

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Real, Thinking, Play

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Eye, Actors, Scene

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Real, Keys, Listening

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Communication, Thinking, Self

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Prayer, Play, Knees

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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, and SoulPancake.com are about is: it's all about human expression and it's about seeking to transcend.

  Rainn Wilson

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Book

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Religious, Philosophy, Teaching

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

• 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.

  Rainn Wilson

  Character, Thinking, Laughing

  Source: bigthink.com