Top 70 Mad Men Quotes

I was a temp for three years in New York when I was auditioning; when I was cast in ‘Mad Men,’ I was still a temp. I’m good at making copies; I’m good at typing things. I’m good at killing the day and making it look like I’m doing something.

I don’t watch ‘Mad Men.’

And, of course, all of my friends and family are so excited because they feel like Montreal is being represented on Mad Men.

Within the U.S., you could have argued that most people who watch ‘Mad Men’ would watch ‘House of Cards.’ But the viewing is much more on par with the large-scale mainstream things like ‘The Walking Dead.’ It was much younger than we thought.

I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on ‘Mad Men’ as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera.

‘Mad Men’ is nothing more than the fulfillment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters – with one-night-stands and excessive consumption of Cutty Sark and Lucky Strikes – is glamorous and ‘vintage.’

If you look at the history of advertising, most of them were Jews, so it was only a matter of time before ‘Mad Men’ explored that area of advertising.

I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from – what he means by this or by that.

I never stepped foot into a Brooks Brothers before ‘Mad Men.’

Being on ‘The Sopranos’ definitely prepared me for the militant secrecy of ‘Mad Men.’

My own beauty routine is influenced pretty heavily from my ‘Mad Men’ routine. If I’m in the series of work, it’s hard to see myself without eyelashes every day.

What happened with ‘Mad Men’ was I had just had my child, I was in a very literally and creatively fertile time in my life, and I wasn’t leaving the house much. So when ‘Mad Men’ came along, I was so excited to leave the house. Like, I get to go do this beautiful thing.

My last audition for ‘Baby Driver,’ I had to meet with Jon Hamm and go through the scenes. I was a bit nervous: ‘What if Jon Hamm dislikes me? This is the end.’ I also watched ‘Mad Men’ religiously, so that didn’t help with my nerves.

I’m a big fan of ‘Mad Men.’

I did ‘Mad Men’ and I still have people come up to me like, ‘Are you actually a lesbian?’ Really? Just because I play one on TV? People will think what they’re gonna think.

I guess maybe someone at ‘Dexter’ saw the ‘Mad Men’ stuff and thought, ‘He can do this.’

At the time I just was like, I can’t believe I am on the show, and the first thing I have to do is an entire song and dance routine for the whole cast of ‘Mad Men.’

Working on ‘Mad Men,’ everything is word for word. And, honestly, I couldn’t come up with anything better than that, so it’s fine.

In the industry, I got a lot of attention for ‘Mad Men,’ because everyone in the industry watches it.

What we’re doing is we’re chipping away at what it is to be a woman and to be feminine. And what it is to be a man and be masculine. We’re chipping away at that. I wish we could go back to ‘Mad Men’ days. I love those days. Men were men. And I love them.

If a show is wickedly, hugely popular, like ‘Mad Men,’ I assume that the masses, in their infinite inferiority to me, don’t know what good TV is and that everyone is just brainwashed.

Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn’t been difficult to stick to the script on ‘Mad Men.’ The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don’t think there’s room – or need – for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.

You can never predict what’s going to be successful, so you have to do the one you really love, and I picked ‘Mad Men.’

I watch ‘Mad Men,’ I knit scarves, I cook and am very, very normal. Honestly.

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of humor in ‘Mad Men.’ Especially in the dark moments.

For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for ‘Mad Men,’ I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That’s about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, ‘Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.’

When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this ‘Mad Men Theme Song… With a Twist’ music video. I released it just as I moved to L.A.

In television, the 60-minute series, ‘The Wire’ and ‘Mad Men’ and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

After ‘Mad Men,’ I got offered various types of uptight Englishmen, which I wasn’t interested in doing. I didn’t want to repeat myself.

I did Shakespeare in college and the nerves I got doing Shakespeare are the same nerves I get doing ‘Mad Men.’

When I watch ‘Mad Men’ and I see the patronising attitudes to women that are so shocking for all of us to watch now, I feel that I’ve lived and see the same evolution in this regard around disability.

I’m finally watching ‘Mad Men.’ As a child of the ’60s, I can’t believe how old everything looks! I am the age of baby Eugene.

I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising.

I was a huge ‘Mad Men’ fan.

The 12 years that I was improvising are why I got the number of commercials I got when I was in New York and why I got ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ and it’s why I even got in the door for ‘Mad Men.’

I spent seven seasons on ‘Mad Men,’ playing what became considered a very feminist character.

I’ve never seen ‘Mad Men.’

For ‘Mad Men,’ we really had to stick to the script, and you want to. It’s not like you feel your hand is being forced. The words you get are the words you say.

The ingredients for great advertising haven’t changed since the ‘Mad Men’ era: Brands win if their advertising is relevant and people like it.

I like ‘Mad Men,’ and I think ‘The Killing’ is pretty great too. I like ‘Brothers & Sisters.’

Having to walk and talk and hit a mark and open a door proved nearly impossible for me. I suppose that’s why we’re on a reality show and not ‘Mad Men.’ Because we don’t act.

I do love the clothes on ‘Mad Men’ because my character has been so elegant and I would never have had access to these clothes. I think Janie Bryant is a costume designing genius. They’ll call and tell me, ‘It will only take an hour,’ and I’m like, ‘I will try on the whole truck!’

Before ‘Mad Men,’ I definitely had very dry spells and I know what those feel like, and I don’t think that ever leaves you as an actor.

I miss ‘Mad Men,’ but I can’t complain because I got a lot of public awareness from it, and it led on to film offers such as ‘Sherlock.’

Over the years, it seems ‘Firefly’ has only gained momentum rather than lost it. I still get letters from people who watched the show – I get more ‘Firefly’ than ‘Mad Men’ letters.

Yes, I’ve heard of the ‘Mad Men’ comparisons, but I like to think ‘The Hour’ has its own distinctive voice. Although it is set in 1956, I have tried to give it a contemporary edge, and its themes of love, passion, romance, fury, professional jealousy, and personal failure are universal, I think.

It’s odd, because ‘Mad Men’ was the first long-form TV thing I ever did. I’d done loads of independent movies, but after that, it was ‘TV actor.’ You go, ‘When did that happen? Everything else has been erased?’

I do feel like the end of ‘Mad Men’ is a sort of a coming of age.

When I first got pregnant, my husband and I were huge consumers of premium cable television, and we were watching all of these shows, and it would either be the B-storyline of a show like ‘Homeland,’ where she’s a working mother, or you have even smaller C-storylines on a show like ‘Mad Men.’

I think it’s touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I’ve felt that way in plenty of TV shows – ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Mad Men.’ How could they do that to that character? That’s drama.

‘Mad Men’ was really my first television role, and it never feels like TV to me. It’s done at such a high level.

I’m consistently blown away by ‘Mad Men.’ Having spent so much time in the writers’ room, I’m cursed in that anytime I watch something, I’m always calculating what the writers are up to.

The fact that the Kardashians could be more popular than a show like ‘Mad Men’ is disgusting. It’s a super disgusting part of our culture, but I still find it funny to make a joke about it.

When I want to relax, it’s nine out of 10 times TV or movies. I love going to the movies and grabbing popcorn or watching ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ and ‘Breaking Bad.’

‘Mad Men’ introduced me to the power of fashion.

I came into the advertising business in 1952, at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthruff and Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the ‘Mad Men’ television series without moving a desk.