Michael Emerson famous quotes

I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
-- Michael Emerson

#Dream #Blessed #Play

I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
-- Michael Emerson

#Thinking #Directors #Want

It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in The Practice than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.
-- Michael Emerson

#Practice #Play #Worry

I've played villains on stage - you know, the Iagos and so on - but I think of myself as a funny person. I mostly did comedies before I did TV work.
-- Michael Emerson

#Thinking #Tvs #Comedy

My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.
-- Michael Emerson

#Mother #Growing Up #Careers

There are roles that are terrifying because they're large or you may feel that they're out of your line, but I'm never terrified once the actual work begins. Once you begin rehearsal, then it's small building blocks. It's solving little problems one at a time.
-- Michael Emerson

#Block #Roles #Lines

One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.
-- Michael Emerson

#Two #Meditation #Feelings

As you may know, previously as Attorney General and now as Governor, I have supported legislation to close the gun show loophole in North Carolina.
-- Michael Emerson

#Gun #May #North Carolina

I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.
-- Michael Emerson

#Thinking #People #Heroic

In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.
-- Michael Emerson

#Heart #Thinking #Play

So we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship?
-- Michael Emerson

#War #Years #People

Maybe there's even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just - a lot of times they'll say, "I couldn't live without it. I just have to be there."
-- Michael Emerson

#Agreement #Creating #People

To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.
-- Michael Emerson

#Character #People #Mystery

Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.
-- Michael Emerson

#Together #Looks #Worship

I liked the scenes with the baby, but the baby steals all the scenes that you're in. So that would get old after a while, because the baby is too perfect. I liked being high on ecstasy.
-- Michael Emerson

#Baby #Perfect #Stealing

So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they're stressing. They're talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together.
-- Michael Emerson

#Christian #Stress #Moving

I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.
-- Michael Emerson

#Thinking #Play #Roles

And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe's connected to a whole network of people I don't know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son's birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.
-- Michael Emerson

#Party #Son #People

I think with President Obama there's going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There's going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era?
-- Michael Emerson

#Mean #Thinking #White

We've done a lot of studies to see when they do happen, why, and I mean there's a variety of reasons. But one, it starts with a commitment where they decide this is going to be who we are. Maybe it's out of their faith, a new way of looking at their faith, that we must be integrated across race.
-- Michael Emerson

#Mean #Commitment #Race

They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.
-- Michael Emerson

#People #Able #Excitement

In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."
-- Michael Emerson

#Worship You #Choices #Slave

We've had people say, "Now when I go to work, I don't feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn't have done otherwise."
-- Michael Emerson

#Talking #Race #People

We go where our family goes. We go where our friends are, and because our social networks are so segregated by race, we end up with what we have. We also find that, you know, if you're immigrants, you're not part of that history.
-- Michael Emerson

#Race #Social Network #Ends

Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.
-- Michael Emerson

#Pain #Confusion #People

I have to conclude, oh, the best people are all somebody other than my own race. So that's difficult. How do we interpret the Bible? Should we stress things like justice and that God is somebody who cares about equality of all people? Or is he a God of love and a God who's there to give me an afterlife?
-- Michael Emerson

#Stress #Afterlife #Race

I mean, so if I've talked to whites in City of Refuge, sometimes they'll wonder, "Why do we do things a certain way, and why do we make a big deal out of events?" And what's happening is they're falling back on their understanding of the way that church should work. It's not always working exactly like that, and they feel frustration or confusion. Sometimes people leave. That's certainly common in mixed churches.
-- Michael Emerson

#Fall #Mean #Frustration

I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don't want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down." It's also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.
-- Michael Emerson

#Sunday #Hair #Organization

It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, "I have to work with whites.
-- Michael Emerson

#African American #May #Sometimes

Life will be simpler when I don't spend two-thirds of the year in the middle of the Pacific.
-- Michael Emerson

#Years #Two #Middle