John Ratzenberger

Diabetes affects my family. One of my kids is affected by it.

On my visits back home, if they saw that I was getting a big head, they'd let me know right away.

After all, at end of the day, when you're breathing your last, it's not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it's your children. Keep that in mind.

To them, the real United States is just flyover country.

I'd never been to acting school, so I never thought I'd get this far.

Hollywood has lost touch with their audience a long time ago.

I'm concerned about the insidious influence of the media's bad messages that undermine the lessons parents try to instill in their sons and daughters.

I've turned down projects based on raunchiness before.

I have been raising money for the past 14 years for diabetes research.

There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

I come from Bridgeport, Connecticut and have friends I grew up with there.

Two days later I got a call that they wanted to try out the character for seven episodes. Eleven years and 22 Emmys later, Cliff was still sitting at that bar.

I always played a soldier, sailor, or policemen.

It appalls me that the people who decide what Americans will be watching on the tube have never been to the United States. Not the real United States.

So many actors have sheer guts, will, and determination; they just need some preparation.

Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they're uncomfortable laughs.

They need to be re-supplied with energy, and that energy comes from asking not what your country can do for you, but from what you can do for your country.

From what I can see, too many kids don't learn pride in their country anymore.

Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.

The last thing on my mind was to be an actor, but I had a crush on a cute girl in the drama department, so the best thing for me to do was audition, help out, do carpentry, whatever it took to get me on that project.

In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.

In L.A., though, people get off busses calling themselves actors, so many are really not professionals.

You've got to write for your audience.

Before 1972, no actors got residuals. They just got paid. No residuals.

When I go to the garage to pick up my clubs, I clean the spider webs off.

The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see.

You'll be tested every single day.

But from what I can see all around me today, that America is fading fast, if it's not already gone.

So many people aren't ready for Hollywood - professionally or practically.

There are technologies you couldn't predict at all when I started.