Quotes from Paul Rust

It's a lot of people's goal to be the lead in a movie, and that was never my goal. I just wanted to be the third banana in an ensemble comedy.

I think it's sort of rare in TV shows or movies to see people being vulnerable. That's sort of scary to an audience.

I'm sure that it's a universal experience, but I wonder if it gets exacerbated more in Los Angeles, where people are constantly looking over at the other people, going, 'Why don't I have that? I want that. Their table looks warmer.'

I think a lot of nights together have been spoiled by somebody not being able to find a parking spot and saying, "Why don't we just go home?"

I remember doing this little physical gesture of holding up my foot and having my foot wave around while I held my ankle. It got a big laugh, and when people started laughing, it dumped some chemicals on my brain. It just felt so good.

Conflict comes from a person's own actions, not what someone else does to them.

My sweet spot, the stuff I like the most, is hopeful melancholy. Optimistic melancholy.

I'm married now, but I fell in love with my wife because she was talented. Talent - it's the big one.

It would be easy for someone to think growing up in a small town would be like 'Footloose' or something, that it would be, 'No dancing allowed!' all the time, but it was quite the opposite. People always got excited for me and my successes and supported me even though I was a little weirdo goofball.

Certainly on a date, I've been over-focused on, 'Is this person comfortable or not?' and then deciding for them that they are not comfortable and I will help them, which is death for a first date.

Every day, I thanked my lucky stars that I got to work with Gillian Jacobs, who is such an amazing actor and brings so much depth to everything that we do.

A lot of the time, a comedy script is just dialogue, and that's the main thing you have to worry about.

Me and my comedy writer friends talk a lot about how we love 'Die Hard,' but we'll never be able to write 'Die Hard.'

My mom did this really cool thing: when 'Pulp Fiction' came out on video, she made, like, a 'mommy edit.' She took two VCRs and dubbed 'Pulp Fiction' from one tape to the next and edited out all the parts she thought were unsuitable for a kid. It was basically, like, the opening and ending credits.

In real life, there are some times where a partner has cheated on somebody, and that person never found out about it. I have to imagine that that's happened before. It's a thing we don't really want to think about, because it's maybe the most painful thing to think about in a relationship - 'What if I've been cheated on and never knew?'

I want to give every single character the dimensions and complexity of a main character.

It's funny; before I started writing professionally, I had a job logging video footage for behind-the-scenes footage for special features.

I love watching movies. That's, like, my favorite thing to do with friends.

The thing I always liked about 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' was Pee-wee's, obviously, an oddball, but nobody in that universe points a finger at him and goes, 'Look at the weirdo!' I think that's why weirdo, arty kids like it so much: because it's sort of like a utopia.

The first text I ever got was somebody breaking plans on a first date. That was, like, the worst way to be introduced to a new technology is with rejection.

With Quentin Tarantino, he makes movies imagining himself as the audience. To be specific and true to what he wants resonates to people who like his movies.

I remember watching Quentin Tarantino accept an Academy Award for screenwriting for 'Pulp Fiction.' If I'd known then that 15 years later one of his movies would again be nominated for an Oscar and I'd be in it - that would be pretty crazy.

I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.

Most relationships probably start with people going, 'Meh, it's probably best not to be embarking in this relationship.' We do it, though, because our brains are wired to make babies or whatever.