Rainn Wilson

Dwight is a sad clown. You've seen those paintings of sad clown.

I know what I look like - a weird, sad clown puppet. I'm fine with that.

So much about religion has to do with rigid, sacrosanct preciousness. I don't live my life that way, and I don't feel that's what Baha'u'llah teaches.

Life is suffering. Life is not resistance to suffering. The point of life is to suffer. This is why we're here: We're here to suffer. I believe in a higher power that compassionately allows suffering for us as a race, to grow and mature.

Music is universal too. Even deaf people like to dance, love rhythm, and can kind of pick it up.

My brain is so anxiety-prone, like a pinball machine. If I don't get up in the morning and focus my thinking, my breathing, and my being for about 12 minutes, I'm just a screwball all day long.

My mom was an actress in the local Seattle theater doing experimental plays.

I like being a Baha'i who has an out-there sense of humor. God gives us talents and faculties, and making people laugh is one of mine.

I think God has a tremendous sense of humor.

You meet people in Hollywood that are famous, and you're not sure what they got famous for.

I'm about as big a star as the Baha'i faith has got, which is pretty pathetic.

I think we're the only jokeless show on television. I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

The founder of the Mona Foundation actually knew my dad for years, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized I really found the perfect charity. It sponsors schools and educational initiatives all over the planet.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke, the poet.

I really wanted to do something positive on the Internet. I wanted to try to get young people talking about, thinking about, life's big questions-make it cool and OK to wonder about the heart, the soul and free will and God and death and big topics like that, big human topics.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.