“The stories weren’t joke driven. The comedy focused on human behavior.” – Ken Kwapis, pg. 5
“So many shows are about somebody trying to better themselves or they have some big goal they’re trying to achieve, and that’s not what life is about for most people.” – Clark Duke, pg. 5
“The great, great, great sitcoms of yore all had a simple premise. It’s character driven. Taxi‘s just a fucking taxi place. Cheers is just a bar. That’s all it is. And we were an office.” – Oscar Nunez, pg. 5
“But there were paper companies, obviously. That became interesting to us. It’s something everyone uses, but you never really think about the manufacture or the sale of it. It’s just something everyone has. There’s also something just about the blankness of it, and the anonymity of it.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 17
“There’s that juxtaposition between how you see yourself and how other people see you. That was a big one for me. It was all about that blind spot.” – Ricky Gervais, pg. 18
“I’ve got the attention span of a toddler and I want to do the next thing while I’m doing this thing. The only thing that gives me an adrenaline rush is an idea.” – Ricky Gervais, pg. 23
“It was him just trying to understand the psychology of the characters so he could build the American equivalent, really.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 27
“Jim is turned slightly away from Pam, so that it takes… this sounds very small, but it’s important… he has to make a choice to turn and look at her.” – Ken Kwapis, pg. 54
“You have to leave a lot of good stuff on the floor.” – Greg Daniels, pg. 75
“We’re going to get up every day, and we’re going to have fun, and we’re going to be funny, and we’re going to make people laugh, and we’re just going to keep doing our jobs.” – Teri Weinberg, pg. 84
“I think the greatest comedy comes from people taking themselves seriously. The circumstances can be absolutely absurd, but if the person is taking the stakes really seriously and taking themselves really seriously, it really is a great comedy mine to dig from.” – Rainn Wilson, pg. 88
“If a person comes in that can do something really well and it’s not quite what you had in mind, you should take them, because they’re going to make the character their own.” – Mark Proksch, pg. 90
“When the character needs love you can play that a little differently than when the character just needs attention.” – Larry Wilmore, pg. 93
“That note from Greg saying ‘Michael’s gotta have heart’ changed it so much. It became ‘Michael wants us to be a family.’ And that’s the core of the show.” – Jason Kessler, pg. 96
“It’s a love story disguised as a workplace comedy.” – Larry Wilmore, pg. 96
“It was all about the framework – that’s a Greg thing: It can’t just be crazy.” – Mindy Kaling, pg. 109
“A national trinket? I can live with that, but I can’t live with a national treasure.” – Creed Bratton, pg. 125
“It’s incredibly fun to play someone that you don’t like. It exorcises your own demons in a way. It’s cathartic.” – Ed Helms, pg. 138
“All the audience wants is for them to be together and have a happy ending, and that is just the death of storytelling.” – Caroline Williams, pg. 143
“The show mixed melancholy and joy in the same space. It’s hard to do, but when it works it’s very special.” Lee Eisenberg, pg. 145
“I remember in season three when Greg Daniels came up to me and started talking about Abbott and Costello. He said, ‘Costello was the funny one, but they paid Abbott more. That’s because it was much harder to find a good straight man to set up the jokes than it was to find the silly guy.’ […] He was basically saying that I was very valuable to the comedy of the show.” – Melora Hardin, pg. 146
“Loneliness is, at least for me, the most universal emotion.” – Caroline Williams, pg. 155
“John was the everyday man of the show. He was the one that was saying, ‘Do you see what I have to deal with every day at work?'” – Matt Sohn, pg. 167
“It can be incredibly frustrating when you’re working on a story and you feel like there’s a story there, but you just don’t have it yet. And then when you have it, there’s just no better feeling.” – Jen Celotta, pg. 205
“There’s story everywhere, it’s just about finding it. When you’re a newer writer it is all about getting out of your own way in order for it to be there. If you’ve set it up, and you have interesting characters, and interesting situations, you will find the story.” – Jen Celotta, pg. 207
“It’s just real. It’s funny, but it never tries to be surreal.” – Brent Forrester, pg. 225
“He was always trying to capture something that’s real about who people are and how they live and feel and love and want and mourn.” – Jeff Blitz, pg. 225
“You’re paying me for the day, you’re giving me a nice comfy trailer, I’ve got a book, and I’m happy.” – Randy Cordray on Kathy Bates, pg. 287
“That’s always the goal, by the way. Even though it’s a comedy, you always want to make people feel. That’s the highest compliment you can get, is to make someone feel something.” – Claire Scanlon, pg. 299
“I think the episode encompasses pretty well what was going on in real life in terms of leaving a workplace that had become pretty much a family and choosing to move on to other things.” – Brian Baumgartner, pg. 331
“‘We are retiring your number on the call sheet. It will never be used by anyone other than Steve Carrell from this day forward on the office. […] From now on until the day you return, all of our call sheets will begin with number two.’ And that had never been done as far as I know in the history of Hollywood.” – Randy Cordray, pg. 336
“People can’t help but change when they have that kind of success.” – Karly Rothenberg, pg. 369
“I think you leave the dance with the date that brought you.” – Owen Ellickson, pg. 374
“I think the simple explanation is that the characters may be exaggerated, but they’re all people you know.” – Briton W. Erwin, pg. 405
“The more realistic a show is, the more you have a chance of emoting and feeling something deep and real.” – Brent Forrester, pg. 408
“It’s never too late in life to find success if you work hard enough.” – Andy Greene, pg. 422
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