Michael Shannon Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm equally terrified of both comedy and drama. The only thing I'm really comfortable with is action.
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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.
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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.
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I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Let's point out the elephant in the room: Actor bands are not notoriously successful enterprises. I can't think of any.
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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.
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That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent.
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I'm just kind of odd. There are dark forces in the world, and if you pay attention to what's going on around you, you end up incorporating it into the storytelling. Maybe it's some aspect of myself that's coming through that people are seeing, that I am in fact a quiet psycho.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.