I would like Americans to make things with their hands. Thomas Jefferson and I feel that makes for a much stronger nation.

I'm enjoying the opportunity that Parks And Recreation affords me to exploit my own soapbox agenda, which is to try to encourage people to make things with their hands.

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and my dad was a basketball coach. Thanks to him, I have excellent fundamentals in both basketball and baseball.

I have a wonderfully hedonistic appetite, and if I wasn't really strict with myself, I'd weigh 300 pounds. I'm not good with moderation.

If I had more time, I'd watch more woodworking or home-improvement shows, but, not enough hours in the day.

If your shirt isn't tucked into your pants, then your pants are tucked into your shirt.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish and you feed yourself. He's a grown man, fishing's not that hard.

Follow your gut, make a choice, and throw yourself into it. If you make a mistake, then you have merely afforded yourself a valuable lesson.

If properly dried and trimmed, New York-style pizza could be used to make a box for Chicago-style pizza.

If you want to be happy in life, consider yourself a student. Every day of your life, think: how can I improve?

Figure out what you love to do, then figure out how to get paid to do it.

During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins.

There’s a widespread belief that if you have solid self-esteem you don’t need outside affirmation and praise. This is patently untrue, by the way.

States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.

I like what I like, I am who I am, I know what I want to do, you know what I'm saying?

If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images.

Jesus never instructed men to do what was right because it was right; yet this is the true reason why they should do it.

When you do 'Mad Fat Diary' or 'The Village,' you always learn about the particular time period, and that's always nice for an actor.

You have to know that success is greater when it's shared.

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind.