Michael McKean Quotes

I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.

I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

There's nobody like The B-52s. But doing stuff on my own, I can also express more personal songs.

I never get myself in a situation where I don't have creative freedom.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

The way I look at a solo project is, I create what I want with whoever I want.

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.

I just want to make my music, and I want it to stand on its own.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.

I think it's so important as an actor that you hang on to your own inner compass, because so many people want to guide you - 'This is what you should you be doing'. But I want to do different things.

I think we're quite unique in that we do have our own sound and approach and we don't really care what's going on elsewhere... we've never wanted to be part of another trend or movement.

I never wanted to be a feature - that was never the goal with my music. I didn't want to just live through other people's work.

My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

I would design for anybody who gives me a free hand and who doesn't sit on my head.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

When I can make music and don't have to think about anyone else's ideas or voice - when I'm making something that only I can make - it feels good. It's nice when you can find a sound that only you can make. No one else can make 'Cosmogramma.' No one else can make 'Until the Quiet Comes.'

I'm happy that I don't have to do covers anymore, because that's not what I do.

I wanna take what I'm doing and create something around it as opposed to trying to fit into someone else's world.