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Rainn Wilson Book: Office Actor Releases Soul Pancake

There's more to Dwight Schrute than wicked one-liners. Rainn Wilson, who plays the devilish character on The Office, has just released Soul Pancake, a book filled with thought-provoking ideas about "life's big questions." In an exclusive for The Daily Beast, Wilson asks himself big questions.

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Rainn Wilson at Rainn Wilson's "Soul Pancake" Book Launch Party at WME Agency on October 29, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California. (Eric Charbonneau, WireImage / Getty Images)

List 5 things you can learn from a 5-year-old.

(Note to all: I'll make it a 6-year-old, since that's how old my son is.)

1. How to wake up with wonder, enthusiasm, and joie de vivre. Singing and dancing is not just for the cast of Glee. We can wake up doing both and have it be a natural expression of who we are.

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2. How to laugh. Just laugh. Let my laughter out, instead of editing, judging, or closing it off. Cynicism, like an opium den, is an easy, poisonous refuge.

3. That the natural world has wonders beyond your wildest dreams. I mean, spiders have EIGHT EYES?! Come on! Grasshoppers have ears on their legs?! AMAZING!

4. That girls are, indeed, weird.

5. How important family is. The bonds we create in the household are the most important and lasting. Savor them; they're sacred.

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What would you want the opening lines of your autobiography to be?

After accidentally dropping my Nobel Prize on the temple of the queen of Sweden while singing "Dream Police" on stage with Cheap Trick, and then secretly jumping on the top of the ambulance, riding with her to the hospital, and saving her life by performing a craniotomy on her acute subdural hematoma, I realized that I needed to write down my life's story.

List 5 things you would literally chop off your little toe for.

1. My son to have a good life

2. To meet the aliens who are observing us from a distance

3. The people of Haiti to have clean running water

4. Steve Carell to get hit by a garbage truck

5. World peace

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Rainn Wilson stars on NBC's Emmy-winning series The Office. He has appeared onscreen in other films and series, including Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Six Feet Under. Wilson currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, fiction writer Holiday Reinhorn, their son Walter, and three pit bulls, Oona, Barry, and Pilot.

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