Michael Shannon Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The stage is a routine. It keeps you grounded, like a metronome. I find that soothing.

I like to play characters that get to do it all - to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that's what's fun.

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.

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

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.

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.

I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.

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

There's nothing routine about 'Boardwalk Empire.' It's like being in some secret society where they call you up and tell you where to go: 'Meet us at the corner of such and so.'

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.

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.

I just keep working on things I like, and hope for the best. I hope people enjoy them.

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.

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.

One of the great things about acting is you can do things that in real life would get you in trouble. I think that's something I figured out pretty early on.

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm equally terrified of both comedy and drama. The only thing I'm really comfortable with is action.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don't have best friends or best buddies.

If you are going to be on TV for however many years, you want to make sure that you have writers that are giving you something to work with, and I got that in spades.

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.

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