McG Quotes

I feel like I experienced my 20s in all their glory and all their disastrousness.

I do like playing the darker side of life but as much as the lighter side as well. They all resonate out of the same place, which is that everyone has a story to tell. Depending on their upbringing and their history, it determines who they are as an adult. My job is to take the role from there.

With 'Brooklyn,' I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special.

I see a lot of possibilities in the age of my characters - between 18 and 21. You have a window of opportunity when you leave your childhood behind and have this chance to become what you always wanted to be. For me, that was a time when I could have gone many different ways. I was in flux and deciding what kind of person I would become. There's something interesting about the vision of what that will be and the reality of making that happen, and how you really are what you are. Unless you're "in character," it's impossible to get around that.

When I was a kid, the world was such a big place, and I had no idea that I would be afforded these great moments in between doing what I love to do.

I don't think that my twenties were any more dramatic than those of most people I know. I was never that bad and I never became that good.

When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.

When you become an adult you just make that transition and you're right... it's fun and exciting to be an adult and exciting to have independence, but once you're out from under the cover of your family's protection and love, you sort of have to take a step back and come to terms with the fact that you won't really ever have that again in the same way. You'll never be a kid again.

[My kids] don't need to cook to keep me happy. It's my job as dad to create opportunities so that they can find their passion. Forget about money, find what you really want to do with your life.

A man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying. And a man without memories is just a shell.

But the original was there as well—more jaded and rudimentary, functional rather than romantic. It fit not just the yellow house but another door, deep within my own heart. One that had been locked so tight for so long that I was afraid to even try it for fear of what might be on the other side

You've got to remember that 25 is a great time because, you know, you're passed that 21 thing and it's a high point, a high peak, in life where you're old enough to say what you have discovered, but you're still open to discovering more.

I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort.

An adult has the opportunity to enjoy the wisdom gleaned from previous decades of living and experience.

There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by being a man.

I have a lot of stories about being a kid because it was the last time I was interesting.

I kind of grew up and started maturing.

A lot of the times we don't see enough of strength. Imagery is obviously a large part of it. I think it's important to see her [Michelle Obama] passion, her complexity, and to see her be challenged. Whether it's about forgiveness, or wanting to do more, it's what it is.

I look back and say, "This must have been somebody else." I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.

Part of me is still waiting to grow up, to be an adult, and the other part knows there is no such thing.

In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up.

I was always intensely Romantic, even when I was too young to understand what that meant.

A good movie humanizes people.

Grown up? Me? I suppose I have. Killing things, and almost killing myself, must have changed me some, after all.

Life is short, youth is finite, and opportunities endless. Have you found the intersection of your passion and the potential for world-shaping positive impact?