Quotes from Jason Alexander

I'm always more motivated by the pain of a funny character than by what makes him funny.

Where are reliable journalism and reliable investigative voices going to come from? I love the days of old - the Walter Cronkites, the Dan Rathers.

What is it about Iowa? I'm the shortest guy in the state.

I'm still bald, I just wear a toupee.

Television, in particular, doesn't look for talent; it looks for personas. You have a great persona? You can be a TV star.

Really, the golden egg of doing a series is that you cross that very stupid bridge that says 'Name Actors Only' in casting sessions. All of a sudden, you become a name actor; it gives you marquee value. That's all that a series does.

The pilot of 'Seinfeld' was made and dropped. 'Seinfeld' was not supposed to go to series.

The downside of being a celebrity is that people kind of know about you, and you really don't need them to know about you - you need them to know about your work.

The thing about For Better or Worse is the only thing that made me an okay director for that is that I have a sense of humor, and it was supposed to be funny.

I had gone to the doctor. The doctor said, 'You're healthy as a horse. You've got two weight problems - two health problems because of your weight. Please do something.'

The greatest part of the job was... that was for nine years it was a pleasure to go to work.

I've gotten a lot of compliments on the 'Criminal Minds' guy. I guess it's because the look of that character is so different from what people expect of me.

Comedy lives on in the web and TV, but nobody's pressing comedy albums anymore.

Poker is just a hobby I'm passionate about. It's not supposed to bring glory.

I can get motivated seeing a kid at my sons school overcome a learning disability.

Well, let's put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey.

Do people absolutely need the arts to get by day-to-day? You can make that claim, but they also really need a lot of things before that.

Even when I was an actor in training, one criticism my teachers had was that I should think about directing instead of acting, because the best actors see the material they're working on through blinders. They can't see anything but their role. I could never really do that.

One of the downsides of being a poker pro is that people see exactly how you play.

I have actually lost a couple of roles - film roles - because a director or producer thought I looked too much like George Costanza, and I could not get out of that box.

I still don't know much about directing a movie.

But I didn't know much about directing a movie.

Do you want to have a career that goes beyond, you know, 11 minutes in a 22-minute television show every week? Some people don't. That's fine.

The necessity for 'professionals' in the entertainment industry is being constantly challenged.