Michael Shannon Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Fighting, Order, Evil

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• I've known a lot of very religious people. My mother is very religious, but she was also very - is very private about it. She - when I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. So I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.

  Michael Shannon

  Mother, Religious, Growing Up

  "Going Under The 'Boardwalk' With Michael Shannon". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. September 14, 2012.

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Powerful, Careers, Rise To Power

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Real, Focus, Variation

  Interview with Anne Brodie, www.askmen.com.

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• People are morons. I don't do any social media stuff. I have people telling me all the time, "You should do Twitter, you should do this, you should get on Facebook." Are you insane? I'm not doing any of that crap. I stay the hell off that thing. Every once in a while, I send a business email, and that's it.

  Michael Shannon

  Media, People, Insane

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Dog, Self, Expression

  Source: www.avclub.com

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

  Michael Shannon

  Character, Play, Loner

  Source: collider.com

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• I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual.

  Michael Shannon

  Real, Years, Acting

  Source: collider.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Real, Cutting, Lessons

  Source: collider.com

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• I just look at it as a real group activity when you are making movies. There are so many different artists doing so many different things, and they are all interconnected. So I like to see what everybody else is going to bring to the table before I make up my mind too much about anything.

  Michael Shannon

  Real, Artist, Mind

  Source: collider.com

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• I'll tell you what's funny about it [NSA wiretapping]: They tell us we got to cut the budget; we have to have budget rollback. We're going to cut the budget on air traffic control, and every once in a while your plane is going to be delayed for three hours. But we do have the money laying around to hire people to read your emails and listen to your phone conversations. That just doesn't make any friggin' sense at all.

  Michael Shannon

  Cutting, Nsa, Phones

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Drama, Fans, Comedy

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Crazy, Two, Focus

  Source: collider.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Hate, Mean, Thinking

  Source: uk.businessinsider.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Years, Giving, Want

  Source: collider.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Magic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The most fascinating part of movies is the organism of the movie - it's such a bizarre thing to do, to make a movie. To see these people come together, band in unity, to create this thing that almost doesn't exist. It only exists because it's projected on a screen, but other than that, it's an illusion.

  Michael Shannon

  People, Unity, Together

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Emotional, People, News

  Source: variety.com

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

  Michael Shannon

  Drama, Comedy, Action

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Fun, Home

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• What should really be happening is a revolution. The system should be torn apart by the people and banks shouldn't be allowed to do what they do, and giant corporations shouldn't be allowed to run the world to the ground the way they're doing. But that's not happening for whatever reason.

  Michael Shannon

  Running, People, Giants

  Source: variety.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Humility, Thinking, Survival

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Nice, People, Over You

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Tired, People, Just Saying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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.

  Michael Shannon

  Believe, Play, People

  Interview with Paul Rudd, www.interviewmagazine.com. January 17, 2013.

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