Michael Ian Black famous quotes

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Thank You #Appreciation #Kids

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Interest

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."
-- Michael Ian Black

#Matter #Kind #Chasing

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Dog #Thinking #Poodles

Whatever expectations I had for myself, none of them have come to pass. I grew up thinking I was going to be an actor, which I am. But I thought I'd be a very serious sort of Shakespearean guy going from town to town having sex with various Juliets all over the country.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Country #Sex #Thinking

I thought I'd be living a much more bohemian life and be very poor. I never thought I'd do comedy or be married living in the suburbs. Every time I try to plan my life out it just doesn't come to pass, and I think that's a great experience.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Thinking #Trying #Comedy

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

#Hands #Effort

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Trying #Important #Ends

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Crazy #Rocks #Ideas

The things I care about are the most pedestrian things in the world. I care about good ice cream and being a good dad and a decent husband.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Husband #Dad #Ice

I never really understood what was expected of me as a man, or how I was supposed to interact with women, but worse, with other guys. I did not relate to them.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Men #Guy #Expected

All my friends were girls. Then my mom's strident feminism for years where men were thought of as the enemy, I just didn't know what the right way to be a man was.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Girl #Mom #Men

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Teacher #Teaching #Actors

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Regret #Believe #Opportunity

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."
-- Michael Ian Black

#Hurt #Boring #Reactions

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

#Enough #Stills

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

#Thinking #Levels #Narcissism

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?"
-- Michael Ian Black

#Actors #Next #Horrible

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

#Self #Causes #Levels

Shuffling really isn't something you should be doing on your deathbed.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Shuffling #Should

By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Book #Writing #Hair

I think writing for anybody helps you order your life. It helps you arrange your emotions and your thoughts and it helps to provide perspective.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Writing #Thinking #Order

I probably should be thinking of better ideas on how to promote myself, but I don't really spend a lot of time doing it. I really don't know how to promote effectively.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Thinking #Ideas #Should

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Games #Trying #Bizarre

As a game-show host, what I'm thinking and what I'm experiencing doesn't matter. My opinion doesn't matter. So there's a flattened reality to it. It's fun to do. But it's certainly not myself in totality - or even maybe a little bit.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Fun #Reality #Thinking

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Games #Shows

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

#Thinking #Architecture

You have to lead, in the case of a game show, a contestant through the architecture of the show. So there's a lot of rules there, literal and implied, that you have to navigate.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Games #Architecture #Cases

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Want #Moments #What You Want

Twitter is about creating whatever persona you want to create and either sticking with it or changing it or evolving it or contradicting it, and I've done all that stuff.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Creating #Want #Stuff

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Character #Writing #Down And

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

#Character #Writing #Littles

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Stupid #People #Reminiscing

I think people just love to win.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Thinking #Winning #People

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Normal #Humans

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Years #Tv Shows #Actors

Super excited about things I'm going to do; never excited about things I'm actually doing.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Excited

So my reaction to hearing this corny-ass, horrible song ["With Arms Wide Open" by Creed] is violent, uncontrollable, sustained weeping.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Song #Fatherhood #Arms

I take my coffee the same way I take my women: Strong, black, and proud.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Strong Women #Coffee #Black

The global business climate is likewhatever, dude.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Climate #Global Business

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

#Funeral #Fingers

I don't watch that much comedy. I think it's professional jealousy. That and a lack of support for my community.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Thinking #Support #Community

I loved Dungeons & Dragons. Actually, not so much the actual playing as the creation of characters and the opportunity to roll twenty-sided dice. I loved those pouches of dice Dungeon Masters would trundle around, loved choosing what I was going to be: warrior, wizard, dwarf, thief.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Character #Warrior #Opportunity

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Couple #Children #Spring

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Growing Up #Hero #Mind Blowing

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.
-- Michael Ian Black

#Pain #Parent #Feelings