Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) is a character on NBC's televison show "The Office." He is the top salesman at the paper distributor Dunder Mifflin, and has won many awards from the company for this success. However, his lack of social skills and people skills means that he has not gained respect from his peers or advancement in the company. Dwight is also known as Mark Payne, an alias he gave himself.

Dwight was at one time a volunteer sheriff and he lives on a sixty acre beet farm with his cousin and best friend Mose (Michael Schur). He claims that he was trained in surveillance during his time as a volunteer sheriff. He loves to play paintball and survivalist type games. He also has a deep love for "the system" and for following rules when he thinks they apply.

Dwight is constantly trying to reach a level of higher authority at Dunder Mifflin. When he was assistant to the regional manager he would instead tell people that he was "assistant regional manager". Dwight thrives on authority and loves any task that he is assigned by boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell).

While Dwight likes to think of himself as a know-it-all, he is actually quite the opposite and is easily tricked. His desk-mate and sales partner Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) loves to tease him and play pranks on him.

In Season 2, Dwight forms a romantic relationship with co-worker Angela (Angela Kinsey). Angela is the head of the accounting department at Dunder Mifflin. The relationship is discovered by the office receptionist, Pam (Jenna Fischer). Angela breaks up with Dwight because he killed her cat to put it out of its misery. She gets together with someone else but she and Dwight continue a covert affair. They are on again, off again over the next several seasons. It is a running joke in the show that Dwight is always gaining the attention of women who are much better looking then he is and he rarely returns the strong feelings that some of these women have for him.

From Season 1 on, Dwight worships his boss Michael. Dwight holds authority figures up in very high regard and will do anything for them. In later seasons he finally began to see that Michael treats him with a lot of contempt and is able to give back to Michael almost as good as he gets. Still, his loyalty to his boss rarely wavers and he even ran a rival paper-distributing family out of town.

Memorable Quotes:

"Could be the mob. But then Dunder Mifflin would need to be a front for money laundering and there is little evidence of that."

"Would you like to form an alliance with me?"

"I'm gonna live for a very long time. My grandma Schrute lived to be 101. My grandpa Manheim, he's 103. He's still puttering down in Argentina. I tried to go visit him once, but my travel visa was protested by the Shoah Foundation."