Ty Burrell Quotes

I think there are pluses and minuses to being simpleminded. The minus is not having any sort of vision for the future. But on the plus side, my wife and I have really been happy through all of the ups and downs.

I didn't know that there was such a thing as butter carving. But then, I poked around a little bit. A quick Google search will show you 55,000 images of butter carvings, and they're extraordinary.

There's lots of problem solving in any marriage, but when you have this collective goal that is a human being, it's an inspiring rally point.

Working with an incredibly strong script is the thing that gives you the most confidence. If you go into an episode knowing the script is strong, I just feel like that's where it all starts. All collaborations that happen, in addition to that, are just bonuses, at that point.

I just like comedy in general. My film work, which has been at times more dramatic, has been satisfying. But I never feel quite as good and as light and blissful as when I'm doing comedy.

Well, that's the great thing about indie film, in general. If it's not subject to the constraints of too much pressure from the studio or marketing, and all of that, you get to actually present fuller characters and you get to have the dark side of the characters. That's usually what gets cut out.

The scheduling thing is really weird with TV shows. Certain projects haven't been able to work out because of the schedule, so some of it is out of your control. You don't have very many opportunities. There isn't much time, so you want to make sure you're going to be doing something that you really feel good about or that you're going to have a good creative experience doing. You're taking up vacation time from your job, so you want it to be meaningful.

My father passed away before he saw me perform. I can't help but wonder what he would think of all this. I go to a job in full makeup.

My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.

I've played a lot of really smarmy people in film, and it can be real fun, don't get me wrong. But it can be characters I'm not as excited to explore.

When you don't have crazy ambitions, you're always happy just kind of getting by. Our expectations were always kept low. And so I feel like we appreciate it all the more to have all this good fortune come our way, which we hadn't really been planning.

You know, I used to think I was a foodie, and then my wife went to culinary school and basically explained to me that I was just a guy that likes to eat.

The truth is I've just never had any kind of plan at all for my career, which is probably not a very flattering thing to admit. I don't know that I'd ever planned to be in this situation. I'm still just an idiot, really really stupid. It's not like I'm now a genius because this has happened. I just got hugely lucky.

It's the opposite on a sitcom. People crave the character to not learn from their mistakes. They want to just see the situation, and then see how that character is going to react to that particular chaotic catastrophe. That's just my take on it, anyway. I don't really get too hung up on what the future of the show is.

I'm not a technical person, at all, but you get a little bit more of a sense for how to get something done a little bit more efficiently. I think everybody is in that place where it's a little bit more efficient, but the process is still the same, which is still loose and collaborative.

I think once I fail enough as a dad, I'll be looking for help wherever I can get it. I just need enough time to screw things up and then I'll start looking to TV dads for advice.

My wife handles all of our technology. So if something goes wrong with the computer, I throw up my arms and step aside while the IT gal figures it out.

I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie.

I've done animated TV stuff, but I'd never done animated film work, which is much more involved and much more labor intensive. The animators are much more meticulous and detailed. It's just been really fun and really satisfyingly creative.