Top 44 Quotes & Sayings by Michael McKean

I'm all over the place. As you may have seen from the credits, I write with everybody.

I think 'The X-Files' was a very important moment in TV history.

I was working with Bryan Cranston in 'All the Way.' We were about to make an entrance together - I was Hoover, he was LBJ - and he says to me, 'You should play the brother in 'Better Call Saul.' I was like 'What?' and it was time to go on. I'm doing the scene, and I can't think of what Hoover's supposed to say.

It's nice to take the gloves off, to really examine your character's desires and goals.

I try and find a way to love every character I play.

I made some friends who are still friends, and this is the city of my birth. I love living here when there's a reason to, other than just moving here. I still don't like the winters here, but it's an amazing city and I love it.

I'm not really a gourmet. I like to try new things.

That's a job that it makes a few friendships, but it probably breaks more.

I can have a real long day; I can have a 14-hour day of intense work and then get home, and it's just me and TCM on into the night.

I'm kind of the town pump. I think I have a pretty good ear for what sounds good in this style.

When we can figure out a way to really tour and make a profit, then we'll do it again.

Some of the most interesting characters in literature and in movies and TV have been ones that you can't quite figure out all the way.

Some people stay in the academic world just to avoid becoming self-aware. You can quote me on that.

I'm not a big oyster eater. But I know people who will sit at a raw bar and eat oyster for two hours.

A character has to believe in himself, so I have to find a way to believe in them. Or at least sympathize to a degree.

On film, when you're driving home from the set, you realize what you should have done, but it's too late. When you're taking the subway home from your play, you realize what you did wrong, and you go back the next night and you do it better, or you screw it up again in a different way. It's a different thing altogether.

There's more than one way to do TV just like there's more than one way to do widescreen movies.

I like working with Bob Odenkirk.

'Clue' was a big flop when it came out, but it became a... It's a movie that almost everyone references with me, now, when I run into people.

I pray to the shrine of 'Mr. Show.' It saved sketch comedy.

I think a villain who starts his morning looking in the mirror, wringing his hands, and going, 'How can I be evil today?' is not an interesting villain. An interesting villain is a person who you understand on some level, I think.

I don't eat steak often, maybe once a month. But when I do, it really hits the spot. When you're done with your steak and your mashed potatoes and your green beans, you really know you've had dinner.

They were kind of like little Stephen King stories... but these go back many hundreds of years.

After I left 'Laverne & Shirley,' I got a ton of offers to play the goofy guy next door, and there were a couple of series that I was offered that turned out to be successful series, but it was too close to what I'd done on my series, and I was really glad I didn't take it.

I'm not a lawyer, thank God. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I've never had the brain power for it. I was not the kind of guy who could learn case law.

To direct a sequel to somebody else's work is not interesting to me.

My wife makes an amazing chili.

You know, I think it's one of those cases where the situation really does dictate your level of ridicule.

I have never had a plan. Things happen to me, and, of course, I make friends who later say, 'Hey, you know who would be good for this? McKean would be good for this.' And they hire me, and if they like me, they hire me again, or the word gets out.

The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true.

I think you have everyone kind of pulling on the same end of the rope. It's not like you're Robin Williams and everyone else is a deaf mute. It's like - there's plenty of help.

Even when there are banalities, they're usually kind of benign banalities.

David Lander and I met in September of 1965. We were both students at Carnegie Tech, as it was then known. Before the Mellon money came in.

People seem to think if you're successful, then you have some secret. The fact is, you've just managed to work your life a certain way.

I watch my wife knitting, and it's like watching close-up magic to me.

Catherine O'Hara's one of the most amazing, wonderful actresses, but she's an amazing improviser. She really is.

Sometimes we drop in and do an acoustic set somewhere, and that's really fun to take all these insanely loud songs, and to do them quiet. It's really a sight to see... or to hear!

I never regret anything and I don't believe in regret. I think it's just a big time-waster.

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.

There are people in the world who won't watch a movie that's in black and white. There's got to be a special place in hell for them.

Those people that you know for a long time and that you love, they're the easiest to talk to.

I think a band that doesn't have a sense of humor can come up with their own take on whimsy.Kind of lead-footed and ham-handed, but I think just all the better for that.

Jazz, isn't that just a series of mistakes diguised as musical composition?

As an actor, you have to be able to take all sides as well. You have to at least be able to understand things. No bad guy looks in the mirror every morning and says, boy, I'm gonna be a real bad guy this morning. He goes after his own what he's after, just like us good guys. You kind of have to take a stand and, a lot of times, you have to take the writer's stand or the stand of the character this writer has created.