Michael Ian Black Quotes

The most important thing to strive for in life is some kind of personal and professional achievement. Not as a man or a woman, but as a person.

We all take from our artistic endeavors what we as individuals need, to make the process unique and fulfilling to ourselves.

I always look at myself as kind of a work in progress. I hope that's not always the case. But for me, every film is a learning experience.

Even though I've been putting out bodies of work for years, 'Beauty Behind the Madness' felt like the beginning.

I would say 'Looking' and 'Spring Awakening' are the most important and personal projects I've ever been apart of.

Some people get turned on by my work, and it sells, but what drives me is the process of making it.

The more I learn and grow, the more I feel fulfilled, and even if I'm shooting a commercial for a car or a computer, I try to deliver a filmmaker's point of view where I can learn from the experience. Then I really enjoy it.

I have had such a satisfying career; I've gotten to do so many amazing things as an artist.

When I look back, there isn't a single film that I would disown because with every film, I've learnt a lot.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

I think if the movie has resonance and stimulates the viewer to talk about it, you can have as large an audience as you want. The most important thing for me is that the movie exists. And that's success enough already.

I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot movie. It's about doing good work.

I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

The most important thing in my life is to live my life and enjoy it - to do what I think is right and what I think is good.

Yet I never want to make a movie purely for the money.

I realized that I wanted to get better in every way. As a person, as a friend, as a songwriter, as a musician, as an artist, record producer, you name it.

Even when you're producing difficult material and you get emotional, after it you feel good; you feel like you've done a good job, or had an emotional release. I've always enjoyed that, but you go home and think, that was a good day's work, and you move on.

Everyone has different goals. For myself, I would rather take less roles and be working on films that I'm passionate about, that are going to challenge me, and that I'm going to be growing from. I don't ever want to take a movie just for the sake of working.

The willingness to keep learning is, I think, the most important thing about trying to be good at anything. You never want to stop learning.

I love how people in this business push themselves to know themselves, the world, and their creativity better.

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.

I view life as a learning experience. It is not so much all about music; it is about what happens when you are doing the music.

I think the act of condensing months or years of work down to a couple hours of entertainment is pretty wild and extremely rewarding.

I try to be conscious of others, put my best foot forward and show growth. I just try to be my best self - and I think that is the most important thing.

I learn from every movie I do because on every movie I have a different experience.