Quotes from Jeff Daniels

And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I've always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.

The older you get, and the more you're in this business, the more you kind of feel like, 'Why don't we just do it my way?'

On cable now, the writer is king. Any actor chases that.

Meryl Streep's brilliant, just brilliant. I've been fortunate to do two movies with Meryl. And for an actor to go moment to moment like she does, there's no one better. And she dances between moments. Each take is different because she's riding instincts, she's riding impulses. And she trusts that.

Stars don't want to have flaws. Stars like to be likable.

Every actor just wants good writing.

And the actors tend not to want to watch themselves very often. I'm one of those guys.

I think we have the attention span of a gnat. You know, with cell phones and Twitter.

Well, the music industry is littered with actors who belatedly came to singing.

I never said, 'I'm going to be a big star.' I said, 'I'm going to be a good actor.' And that took the pressure off.

You know, it's really strange now with the Internet, with everyone having an unsolicited, anonymous opinion.

You can't rewrite nothing, but you can rewrite 90 pages of sh*t. Now you've got your sh*t on the page, you can go work.

I think the American electorate should work a little harder at getting informed. That includes hearing, truly listening, to what the other side is saying. Whether you're left or right.

There's not a single job in this town. There's nothin', nada, zip. Unless you wanna workforty hours a week.

There is no best anything in art.

And that's one thing that helps me is I learn it blandly, vanilla, then I don't try to act it too soon because you start to act it, and you kind of go away from what the next sentence is, what the next paragraph is. So get it down so it kind of can - it's in there so you can then, as I call it, dance on top of it.

I never starved. And you know, whatever talent I have, I've relied on that, versus image or star. I have just said, 'Hire me if you want somebody good.' I tried to be as good as I could be every time out, and that's kind of bridged the decades.

You see a lot of these movies that are really just 90-minute video games. The effects are incredible. I get it: There's an art to that, terrific. I'm not interested in it, but there's an art to that I suppose.

As an actor, you're always at the service of somebody else's vision. In a play, it's more of the director's vision, and he or she's got their hands on you all the way up to opening night, and if it's a film, there are even more people.