Sean Hayes

“I was a piano major with Craig Robinson from 'The Office.' Me and Craig were very close in college at Illinois State University... It's so bizarre to see us out here now doing things.”

“And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.”

“I'm definitely an actor first, but it's fun to kind of, you know, push your boundaries and see if you can do things that have scared you a little bit your whole life.”

“Everybody has a different definition of God. When people say, 'Do you believe?' I think they mean the Christian God. There are a lot of gods, so I think they cancel each other out.”

“Through that, I got to know Jerry's work, and I am definitely his number-one fan right now, which is interesting because it usually works the other way around: you usually create a project based on your hero.”

“Religion is constantly being talked about, debated, pondered, worried about.”

“I did, like, 30 or 40 commercials before 'Will & Grace' where I was the straight husband. I had two spots on the Super Bowl in 1998 where I was the straight dude.”

“I want to make people laugh first, and that's it.”

“I'm consumed with what I didn't do. I know I should've come out sooner, and I'm sorry for that.”

“I didn't want the responsibility, I didn't know how to handle the responsibility of speaking for the gay community. I always felt like I owed them a huge apology for coming out too late.”

“There weren't any funny people in sports or the Spanish club. All the really creative, witty, funny people that made your belly hurt were in the theater program.”

“Each individual human being has a lot of stuff that nobody knows about. Nobody knows what anybody else is going through at any point in their lives.”

“I think because my life is so insane and it's constantly going at 120 miles per hour, my favorite thing to do is sit at home in front of the TV and check out.”

“I was the music director at a dinner theater called the 'Pheasant Run Theater' in the suburbs of Chicago, and that was my side gig while I acted.”

“Everybody kind of looks to comedians and comedy for relief and a fresh breath about what is going on in the world.”

“I'm just quiet. It's fantastic.”

“Knowing you're gay, as a kid in the '80s, is a very scary thing.”

“When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.”

“No one could have ever dreamed about how well the show would do.”

“The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date.”