Nick Offerman Quotations

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.

Meat is a big deal in my life. I do love breakfast food, but I don't think that's extraordinary. I'm a normal American. We love eggs and meat and potatoes and gravy.

You know, it's hard to beat bacon at anytime of day. But I also am a big fan of corned beef hash.

I'm very hairy, and men in film and TV are no longer allowed to be hairy.

You know, even working actors can end up having a lot of spare time. And you can either go sit at the Starbucks and wait for your agent to call you, or you can go learn how to build a Shaker blanket chest with hand-cut dovetails.

When I hear young people today complain about being bored - and the things that keep them from being bored are generally exclusively videogames and/or computer pastimes - I just try to encourage them to go outside.

I have a Kenwood charcoal grill. In our house, if anybody is cooking, it's me. I love making burgers. I love making pork tenderloin. Lamb chops I do on the grill a lot. But you just can't beat brats.

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

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

I've been working steadily as an actor since around 1998. I wasn't well known in the public, but I was a dependable working journeyman.

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.

I have a corn creamer that I love. It extracts pulp and juice from kernels, and I simmer that down into a creamed corn that has an almost mashed potato-like consistency. I add butter and hit it with chopped fresh chives at the end for an accent of color.

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.

I worked a lot in Chicago's theater scene as a fight choreographer. And so I do have a lot of experience in stage combat and also in Kabuki dance and Kabuki theater.

And what we've lost sight of is that performing manual labor with your hands is one of the most incredibly satisfying and positive things you can do.

I've learned through experience that to trouble celebrities with my handshake doesn't do anybody any good.

I've had to learn and discipline myself that I'm much happier and much less depressed if I give myself a project. It's just that simple.

I think it's fascinating that I receive attention for what people perceive to be a level of manliness or machismo, when amongst my family of farmers and paramedics and regular Americans, I'm kind of the sissy in my family.

My uncles, who are farmers in Minooka, Illinois - I grew up with them and their pickup trucks and mustaches, and to me that was masculinity: big hairy sweaty guys who could pick up a bus.

I always had a lot of confidence in my work and the unique flavor I like to bring to my characters, but you know I'm not a huge dreamer.

I come from a family of fishermen. Fishing is very important to us. We don't hunt. We're not gun folk.

I spent a lot of my youth working outside in the elements, and I kind of revel in defeating tough weather.

My wife happens to be probably the greatest working woman in comedy. I can't think of anyone who even approaches her achievements and her abilities.

When I got my job on 'Parks,' it was so dreamy, kind of unfathomable. I didn't think a job that excellent could exist for me.

When I was in high school, I would perform every year in those plays and there was something I really loved about it. But I was completely unaware that you could sort of get into an acting career.

I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.

There have been a few occurrences where people in restaurants have sent me a rasher of bacon, which I am not going to turn my nose up at. I never let them down.

I am always so happy to be at 'SNL.' I still feel like a kid when I'm there, like I can't believe I'm watching them make the show.

I grew up among farmers in Illinois and so you always have to have the tools you might need in the eventuality of a flat tire or a broken window.

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

When I got to Los Angeles, I started building cabins in peoples' yards, building post-and-beam structures and cutting the joinery for those.

I also grew up building theatrical scenery. I spent many years building scenery as a large part of my income and that allowed me to really develop my shop skills.

For years I drove a big Ford F250 pickup. That was my ride because two-thirds of my work was wood work, and I'm always driving up to Northern California, where I harvest salvaged trees.

It's funny, growing up there was never anybody around me with any kind of artistic bent.

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'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.

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

It's hard to swallow when people say, "Oh my God, you're a master of something." I say, "No, I'm actually a student of that. I could turn you on to websites for 25 masters, and you'll quickly see that I am their disciple."

Always maintain the attitude of a student. If you think you've done learning, bitterness sets in, but if you have more to achieve every day, in any arena, that makes each morning's awakening full of potential and cheery portent.

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

I'm always pleased that I managed to stay out of jail throughout my tenure in Chicago.

Technically, we're all half centaur.

Marijuana is quite possibly the finest of intoxicants. It has been scientifically proven, for decades, to be much less harmful to the body than alcohol when used on a regular basis.

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.

One of the most poignant pieces of recent science fiction for me was the portrayal of the adults in the Pixar film WALL-E. I feel like we're on the cusp of becoming fat babies in floating chairs being fed everything in shake form, and I feel like I am as prone to laziness as anybody.

Of course smartphones are brilliant inventions, but the nefarious thing about Twitter and other social media is that it starts to fill all the gaps in your day. I quickly become an addict.

I have a ridiculously beautiful wife who's super sexy, and as long as she's happy with me, I don't need to look in the mirror and think, "How do I stack up next to Bradley Cooper? Would Cooper rock this shirt?" Doesn't matter. He does not have your wife. You do.

How lucky my life is that I have two arms, and two legs, and ten fingers with which to make things out of wood.

There's a lot of common sense ... which I feel like we have lost touch with.

Jobs that require a suit upset me. They displease me much, as our world is rife with such superficial conformity.

I've split my life between a few different disciplines.

I'm a very intermediate sax player, but now that Rob Lowe is on my show, I had to cop to him. Like, 'Dude your ridiculous fake sax playing [in St. Elmo's Fire] inspired me to pick up a horn.'

We're cognizant, curious beings, capable of philosophical thought, nuclear physics, repeating Nerf weapons, global consciousness, Glade air fresheners, and sentient automobiles. But we're assholes first.

I think all these great comforts that come from the human condition of trying to make things easier on ourselves also have these pitfalls, where things become so easy that we forget how enjoyable building a fence can be.

It's taken me a lot of years to peel away my own layers.

If you don't look at yourself and evaluate it, you instead see how the world's reacting to it.

Just stand up for your principals and be loyal to your friends and family.

Let's just say I can never be cast again after Ron Swanson. Then I have a life of theater and woodworking and my wife to look forward to, and that doesn't make me anything but very happy.

Turn off your computer and go out of doors. Dig a large enough hole to transplant a mature apple tree. Nurture the tree, feed it, coddle it so that its fruit will be ample, bright and firm. Practice open-hand strikes against the rough bark of the trunk until it's time to harvest. Choose the champion of your apple crop, pluck it from the tree, and beat yourself about the face and tits with it until your mettle will suffice.

I'm opposed to a lot of the time that we as a civilization have come to spend looking at screens. For my money, life is much delicious damn near everyplace but inside that screen.

With all of the visual distraction constantly inundating us in the form of our devices and screens, I really derive a great deal of pleasure from watching the sun rise and set, admiring clouds as they change shape across the sky, watching tree leaves and blossoms undulate in the breeze....these treats foment an ocular-cleansing refreshment to my way of thinking.

I don't get nominated, and I have to say, I've probably gotten the greatest mass of press in my life through not getting nominated. It's definitely been a winning situation as far as I'm concerned.

If you always have something in your life that you're trying to improve upon, then every day you have a reason to get out of bed, and you have a reason to achieve something and feel good.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

I never went too long without a job. The problem was a lot of the early jobs are almost more demoralizing than unemployment.

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

Once you have a PhD, every meeting you go to becomes a doctor's appointment.

A lot of people find themselves in the entertainment business - or perhaps society steers them toward it - because they're beautiful.

I think that purity creates not only a higher level of artistic vision but a purer work ethic.

Really, all religious teachings can be boiled down to: “Just be cool. Don’t be an asshole.

If you like comedy, go home and curl up with Leviticus. The writers of The Onion are handed Leviticus on their first day.

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."

If I put down my tweeter machine for a minute, I actually can communicate with people. As an aside, astonishingly, I just started doing Twitter.

The world is split into two halves: the bacon, and the bacon eaters.

I first read [Wendell Berry] 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.

Damn it all, you have been given a life on this beautiful planet! Get off your ass and do something!

I learned the word non-conformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

Not only do I recommend [Wendell] Berry to anyone who will talk to me for more than seven seconds, but I buy his books in quantity and send them to people. I bought a few dozen of his newest, "Our Only World."

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

Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends.

Whatever it is you like to do, that's the sexiest part of you.

When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life.

The quest for the next key art awards begins with tomorrow's hangover

I awaken. I consume oxygen, then bacon, eggs and black coffee, then my wife, then bacon.

No matter how you decide to spend a little more time on your gestures of giving, the point is just quite simply that you do.

Shut your damn mouth.

Before people figured out I was funny, I got cast quite a bit as either a rapist or serial killer or the guy who catches those people.

I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that's what has led us to this place where, as we've developed technology.

Don't use barbiturates before going on stage. And be honest.

I am a saxophone player.

When we think of an actor, we think of a tanned, frosted-tipped, model-looking guy. We don't think of a plumber.

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

When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.

When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.

Children are so egocentric - they want to watch their lives, and not yours.

I keep having these bros come up to me and say, "I used to watch you when I was a fetus," and I just want to kill them.

We realized that the world of popular culture had been creating the perfect candidate for many years: the female champion of the universe.

It's irrelevant to me if other people know who I am. I'm just, I'm really happy. It calms me down, too. If you're on top of an oilrig, fighting with politicians, or whatever - you need a bit of wisdom to realize that you're not always right, or that you're not always being reasonable, or you're not always listening.

I always call myself a "student" of the guitar.