Mike Vogel Quotations

When I graduated from high school, I weighed 125 pounds because of wrestling. Suddenly, I realized I could eat whatever I wanted - plus, creatine was new at the time. I went from 125 to 175 pounds, working out like crazy. I was yoked. But I wasn't drinking enough fluids and ended up with a kidney stone - and 3 weeks of pure hell.

Music is just a huge part of my life. It affects moods. I've always found it insane how you can hear one song, and it takes you back to a specific, specific moment in your life, and you remember it vividly like it was yesterday.

On paper, actors are the dumbest group of individuals essentially out there. Most of us have not gone to college. However, we never stop learning. Because of what we do, we're constantly researching, constantly learning.

I grew up a plumber's son in Philadelphia.

I have many friends in Special Forces, and the amazing thing about these guys is how quickly they can read someone.

I roll out of bed, walk into the garage, work out, and go about my day. I'll bring my daughter out there in her ExerSaucer. I don't know if I'll ever go back to a gym.

My wife is a terrific Southern cook. My favorite of all the great things she cooks is 'trash potatoes.' That's mashed potatoes with sour cream, bacon, cheddar cheese, and horseradish. It's a total gut bomb.

My whole life, I wanted to be a fighter pilot; it's what I wanted to do. I set up all of my classes for it, but I got lazy my senior year in high school and didn't get my paperwork in.

I was better, so they pushed him somewhere else, to another spare part they had in the movie.

You show up freshly rested and flown to these events while these guys are driving their own pick-up trucks there and then they're working a 9-5 job during the week while the factory riders are on their own private test track dialing it in, getting the bikes set to their exact specifications.

They're very quiet. You can tell that there's something that they're about to do. They have the track walks before the race. They go and do their thing, and not a word is spoken between any of them. They're just staring at the track.

They didn't do it to stay together -- it was nice they did -- but they just wanted to play. And the best program around is Penn State.

They either failed to report their income or failed to report their entire income.

Their high school career was phenomenal. I don't think another high school will do what those guys did.

I really don't feel my tax dollars should be involved in renovating something that belongs in the private sector. To be perfectly honest, the fact that it's an architectural jewel doesn't really push my buttons.

I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to '90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories.

I do things that are very uncharacteristic of a normal workout routine. I hate cardio. Absolutely hate it. I grew up as a wrestler, so it was constant cardio, cardio, cardio.

I found that inevitably you cannot fit everything that is in that book into what is inevitably going to go on screen.

The great thing about sci-fi is that the fans and the audience are unlike any other genre out there. They are constantly looking for great content and good stuff. They don't care where it comes from, they'll latch onto it.

Television moves so fast. A series moves at such a rapid pace and things are changing, episode to episode, where you're going, "Wait, why am I doing this? This last episode, you told me I was doing this." You're shooting at a moving target.

Film is very much about sitting around and talking about ideas, and that's the stuff that I love, but I haven't experienced that yet in the television that I've done so far. It makes me long for movies again because, creatively, I always have a much more fulfilling experience there.

When you choose a show you really don't know where it's going to go. Sometimes things let you down and sometimes things just surprise you and fulfill you way more than you thought.

Normally I can't watch playback. I can't watch anything because I know that it's so rough and there's going to be effects that are added, there's going to be sound effects, there's going to be so much stuff that happens between this point and that finished product that it just ruins the illusion for me.

I come home more exhausted after a day of emotional work on set than I've ever had in any sporting event I've played or anything. It's draining. But it's also part of the fun.

For me, whatever the outcome, it's nice to sit back to something and say, "Man, I'm really proud of that. I'm real proud of the experience that I had, I'm proud to be a part of something so iconic whether anyone watches it or not. They can't take away the experience that I had.

When my wife and I met, I couldn't talk to her - and my defense mechanism is sarcasm. I belittle someone with verbal pokes and prods. I did it to her out of complete awe. When friends introduced us, I said 'Hi' - and turned my back. Later, I called my mom and best friend and said, 'I think I just met my wife.'

These kids had a lot more contact with the sport. It's not as if they were learning the sport in ninth grade, a lot of kids started touching a volleyball in third and fourth grade.

The Dome is a metaphor that could mean anything - it could be nuclear fallout, terrorists - I've always been fascinated with stories where people's roles are flipped on their heads, be it the Wall Street guy, the techno guy, etc. All of those things are only successful when there are people and money around.

All of our stunts guys, too. Rich Taylor, David Pingry, Dave Castillo, Jimmy Roberts, our stunt coordinator, these guys all came off the pro circuit and at 28, 29 years old they're retired from the sport because their bodies had taken such a beating at that point I've gone out riding with those guys a lot since the film, and it's cool because you don't get that kind of training every day.