Top 37 Quotes & Sayings by John Slattery

Viewers can hate a character and at the same time can't take their eyes off of him.

I've never directed anything before 'Mad Men,' so I don't feel I have any advice for the other directors.

Memories are just stories we tell ourselves about our past; and that's often why they don't match when we've shared the same experiences with someone.

Let's face it, making movies is all risk. Most of the time, batting average-wise, the reward does not outweigh the risk.

And I don't want to jump out of an airplane - I've done that.

I have met Tom Hanks. Several times. And he's been very nice.

You learn pretty quickly: if you fall in love with your edit, you're bound to be heartbroken because it will all be re-cut.

You put a movie star or a bunch of movie stars in a movie, it doesn't mean people are gonna go see it. It's been proven time and time again.

Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene.

I think I gravitate towards people who express themselves in a simple and funny way.

When I was coming up, everybody wanted to be Tom Hanks. There was always Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - they were the heavily dramatic stuff. I always had a foot in both camps. The hardest thing was to resist the advice to be like someone else. It took me a while to figure that out.

For some reason surfing... I'm not scared of the ocean so the risk doesn't seem as great to me.

I think the moments that are difficult for anybody are when you see what your life could be, if only you had the courage to take the steps needed.

I've dyed my hair a million times and it looks terrible, always. It just looks fake. And it doesn't make me look that much younger.

I guess, you make a big studio film, you spend a lot of money on it and you hope people go see it. It's really risky.

When I first started, I was kind of surprised that anyone would ever hire me at all. So I took everything that I was offered.

I've done a lot of pilots. A lot of shows. You're young and you do a job just because you know someone gave you a job.

I was a horrible limo driver: I ran out of gas with passengers in the back and I used to get lost on a regular basis.

As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design - all of this is happening in a very intense period.

On 'Mad Men,' I have a bit of an advantage because I know who gets better as they repeat a scene and who's best at the beginning.

The rule of surfing is never tell anyone where you go.

I think the ongoing discussion of the world of advertising is, 'Where is the soul in advertising?'

I like to try the scene over and over, but given the confines of television, I don't have that option.

I don't have to worry about how my movies sell because I'm not the guy in front.

When I was growing up, the top movies dealt with grown-up, complex emotions.

But the path you end up on means that you have to close a lot of doors, too.

My wife tells me I need to learn to be more patient with my son.

I'm a little kid at heart, so my eyes light up when everything is lit.

A painting can't be everything. You have to stop, at some point. It has to be finished, if you want anyone to see it. Some people just continue to work on things, forever. I don't know which is better.

The good thing about directing yourself is that you get over yourself.

If [being confident stems from] a self-esteem issue, it's important to embrace the things you might define as so-called imperfections - because something that you might call an imperfection, someone else might find so amazing and so beautiful. It's all in how you embrace yourself, your faults, and your mistakes in life. There's no better way to learn and become a better person than to go through those moments.

You have to fight for what you need to fight for.

My mom used to wear the fragrance Poison when I was younger, and I remember that scent and the purple bottle. That was my first [perfume] memory.

I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell?

We all went through that teen phase of wearing that really soft fragrance. As I got older, I started loving men's fragrances and cologne. I was so attracted to men's cologne; I would spray it all over me.

I'm proud of myself that I had the courage to experiment with crazy hairstyles and some fashion things.

I used to be more insecure about working, and I guess the older I get, the more rich my life becomes, I don't need to work as much as I used to. I mean, New York is a hard town to be in when you have nothing else to do besides show business. It's brutal, especially as an actor, because you sit around with this low - grade fever of anxiety, waiting for the phone to ring. Or waiting for something.