Michael Shannon Quotes

That's the great secret of humans: we're all the same person. The best thing to do is just go for the hug.

If I were God, I would just be up there scratching my head, thinking, 'What the hell am I supposed to do with this?' For everyone helping an old lady across the street, there's someone else bludgeoning a person to death. And sometimes they're the same. How can He separate us all out?

I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up.

That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.

Let's point out the elephant in the room: Actor bands are not notoriously successful enterprises. I can't think of any.

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.

You got to know what's worth keeping and what's worth letting go.

I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.

If you give me enough time, enough leash, I can become pretty reasonable.

I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.

When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person.

The thing that is always important to me is the relationships. I feel like until I get around with the actual people that I am going to be working with there is only so much that I can do.

I've always been happy just to be working. It doesn't really matter for me how many people are familiar with my name or my picture, or whatever.

What I'm angry about, and I've gone on record saying this, is I think that financiers get away with murder. They realize they can get something for nothing and they won't settle for anything else. There's something called a Schedule F. If I work for a Schedule F contract that basically means I'm doing the movie for free because by the time I pay all my commissions and taxes there's barely anything left for me to live on. This whole notion that you do work that you love for very little money and then you go out and do something you hate to make money.

Design is the fundamental creative activity with which we direct our lives, and collectively, the earth's transformation from its original, natural state into our human-made world.

If you don't fight the system, you can either take advantage of the system or let the system take advantage of you.

Theater is the best. That's where you get the work done. You just really get in there and figure something out about a story or a character or life or the world. That's where magic stuff happens.

As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.

The magic word for me is pumpernickel. I love pumpernickel. I must have some Russian blood in me because I could just eat pumpernickel and raw onions.

There are certain ways of being that people don't find acceptable or very pleasant in regular life, but you go out on stage and do pretty much the same thing and they find it spellbinding.

Everything that happens on Wall Street only fortifies my opinion that there is in fact a more ludicrous industry than the entertainment industry.

It's a little bit odd. The first time you do the play, you kind of throw yourself into it, trying to get the most out of all the individual moments. Then, a few hours later, you're still there, wondering what you could possibly do differently than what you just did a couple hours ago.

I think improv training really orients you to character development, more than taking a Strasberg class or Meisner class. Not only is it about developing character really quickly, but it's also about being a good partner in the scene.

People don't go to the movies to get the news, people don't go to the movies to learn a lesson. People go to the movie to get an emotional experience.

One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd.

This whole notion of the acting career as a monopoly where you rise to power... it doesn't really work that way. I don't ever really feel powerful in any way. It's kind of the same thing it's always been: You just figure out what you want to do and you do it.

It's obviously a lot harder to try and be a good guy than it is to be a bad guy. The world is a fundamentally evil place, it seems like. So in order to be a good person, you have to fight temptation and vice.

Humility in this business [acting] isn't just a matter of being polite, it's kind of a matter of survival. You can't ever afford to think that you're the bee's knees, because you could always afford to be better. You have to always be searching for something better.

I think if you watch a lot of what I do, you're going to ultimately walk away seeing me. I can't hide - that impression is a personal impression people have of me.

A lot of times people will send me stuff. They will find something and they will send it to me and then I will take a look at it. Every once in awhile I will go on IMDB for 10 or 15 minutes and look around. But I am not a huge gearhead. I don't even have my own computer. I use my girlfriends.

Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.

If you are only getting two takes and you are on a crazy set where there is a lot of noise and distractions and it is hard to focus - that is frustrating. But I don't mind two takes if there is a healthy respect with the work going on with the actors.

I want to focus on each scene. I'm a real perfectionist, and I don't want to feel like I didn't consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I'm used to a lot of repetition, and I'm used to really attacking something over and over and over again.

There are so many people who make their fortunes of the misfortunes of others. I don't know if it's because the world is too damn crowded, or what, but it's something that I've been noticing for awhile.

Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

When I'm working, I don't wake up and say, 'OK, time to go be intense.' I just look at whatever scenes we're working on that day and break them down - just real intense everyday work.

I certainly don't want to have too many pre-conceived notions before I show up because then you might be cutting yourself off from the real lessons of what is going on.

It is surprising that people are snapping photos and stuff and then putting them on the internet. For me, it is like, "Why would you want to do that?" It would be like knowing what your Christmas presents were before Christmas morning.

I started acting because I was miserable and crazy and wanted to be someone else, to run around and scream in front of people without getting in trouble.

I don't travel for fun, because I travel so much with my work; when I'm not working, I mostly want to stay home.

Well, I think anybody who's had a baby can tell you that once you have a baby, they kind of become the main focus. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of room for anything else.

It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.

If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.

Most of the time for movies and stuff, with the exception of Jeff Nichols, who I've worked with a few times, you just don't know people too well. Everyone is cordial and nice and some people are very genuinely friendly, but once the movie is over you never see them again.

When you see a struggle that you may be having personally put on a big screen and in a roomful of people, then it makes you feel less crazy or alone, because you're seeing that other people are dealing with it too. You get to see in this imaginary scenario how people might try and answer some questions or deal with some problems.

I guess if there's one thing that might surprise people about me, it's that I'm very obedient. I'm kind of like a dog. I look at acting as kind of a service industry. You're there to serve the writer and the director. I don't really look at it as an act of self-expression, like I'm going to say what's on my mind.

I enjoyed living in Chicago and doing plays for little or no money. I never actually thought that I would leave Chicago, originally. I wasn't one of those people that had a plan to pack up the van and drive out to Hollywood. I didn't want to.

Inevitably people will get tired of me. People get tired of everyone except Jimmy Stewart. I'm not saying Jimmy Stewart would get tired of me, I'm just saying people will never get tired of Jimmy Stewart.