Top 20 Michael Shannon Quotes

Everybody’s constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.

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.

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

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.

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.

My dad used to say, ‘You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,’ and there’s some validity in it. But honestly, even when I’m inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.

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.

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

The thing about New York is, more than any other place I’ve ever been, you run into people on the street that you would never imagine you’d see, old friends, people just like there for a day or two. I find that all the time when I’m walking around Manhattan, running into people that I had no idea were even there.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 pick my roles by genre; that’s kind of silly.

One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own problems.