Mark Duplass Quotes

I've politely declined a few reality-type things but generally have been asked to do things that I'd enjoy. I'll be doing less in the new year so I can get some writing done.

Most of the time when I'm in Australia I'm not really working, it seems. I'm just at home, getting on with renovating my house or writing music or whatever. So I get back to doing all the stuff that I naturally do. Whereas if I'm away working, that's all there is to do, is to concentrate on the work.

The busier we are the more leisure we have.

The ultimate goal of a more effective and efficient life is to provide you with enough time to enjoy some of it.

The only way to have time is to shut down and then do what you want to do.

I have done a few solo projects that I really enjoyed and would love to have time to do more. Key word here is time!

When I have time, I write other things. I'm working on a book, I paint, I sculpt, I play with my dog, I watch television - I catch up on South Park or movies or whatever I've missed, normal stuff.

Nothing excellent can be done without leisure.

[Children] would have messed up my apartment. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books.

You really don't have a life when you're working. I always think "oh, I'm gonna see everybody on my days off. I'm gonna read so many books and see so many films" and then three months go by.

I came to writing kind of late. I was an engineer, and the one thing I've learned is that you have to steer a project in the direction of the maximum fun for you. You could say lively energy, or you have to try to be intrigued. Basically, if you were a musician and you were playing joylessly, nobody would want to hear you.

I'm such a damn workaholic, that it's interesting to be like, "Oh, what do I do for fun?"

I just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping...just little things.

If workers are overworked, or companies hire temps at low wages, this fundamentally comes down to the quality of life for a person. It's bigger than wages. They should be able to spend time with their families. And if they're single, they should be able to have fun and not spend every day of their life working 12 to 15 hours a day and never get a chance to take care of their well-being. To me, that's part of living a good life.

Have a day off, which is very rare in our line of work, but that's something we like to do. Like I said, it's a nice way to take your mind off the game and just go out and relax and have fun.

Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.

just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

No American can understand the need for time -- that is, simply space to breathe. If you have ten minutes to spare you should jam that full instead of leaving it -- as space around your next ten minutes. How can anything ripen without those 'empty' ten minutes?

With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life. Having four days off would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied.

I think the only reason I've had the career life that I've had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you're very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That's sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that's a job I could be proud of. It's changed my life learning that, and it's made me better at what I do.

Work hard, play hard.

I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.

It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make.

You've got to have some fun before games or you make the season too long. We don't start work until seven o'clock. If you're game-ready at three, it's not good for you. This is the only way I know how to do it.