Mckean Quotes

#1. I would love to interview Michael McKean and his wife, who wrote the songs for 'A Mighty Wind,' which is my favorite Christopher Guest movie. I'm just a sucker for any funny guy that has a wife who is intelligent and that he collaborates with.

Julie Klausner

#2. You can weaponize nice ... Being nice can make you be a little underestimated.

Erin McKean

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

Michael McKean

#4. Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.

Erin McKean

#5. Sometimes, it seems to me that, the smaller the things is that people want, the bigger the disappointment when they don't get it, or it's not exactly right -dora

Erin McKean

#6. For me, conferences are like little mental vacations: a chance to go visit an interesting place for a couple of days, and come back rested and refreshed with new ideas and perspectives.

Erin McKean

#7. I'm a huge science fan; I read a lot of science books. But I'm not a scientist, my interest in science is I love the facts, but I like to interpret those facts. They become the raw materials for stories and paintings and things.

Dave McKean

#8. I don't want to get pigeonholed just doing just family films and fantasy films ... I don't really want to get pigeonholed just doing anything in particular.

Dave McKean

#9. Twitter has already birthed an entire ecosystem of other sites that extend its power or interact with it. But Twitter isn't just a platform for technological innovation: It's showing signs as an engine of creativity for the language, too.

Erin McKean

#10. I tend to be known for different things. I mean, there are a lot of comics or sci-fi fans out there who sort of think of me doing that kind of work, but there are just as many people who like the CD covers I've done, or the children's books I've done. So different people like different things.

Dave McKean

#11. Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that's ever been used in print.

Erin McKean

#12. Reading a good comic is a creative act. Watching a film is often a more passive experience, and since I'm interested in engaging that conversational aspect of creativity, I'm trying to find ways of achieving that in my films.

Dave McKean

#13. Singing is probably the better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too.

Erin McKean

#14. Pride in what and who you are is a strong foundation, but don't be defined by your oppression; use your anger, don't let it use you.

Dave McKean

#15. I mean, it's not even been a two-and-two-make five sort of a day, it's more like a two-and-to-make ... fish ... or something ... You know? Not even close to making sense.

Dave McKean

#16. You can limit the number of invitations to an in-person fashion show, but you can't police the Internet.

Erin McKean

#17. The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.

Dave McKean

#18. By the time the traditionally male lexicographers become interested in looking at fashion words, their origins are lost in the mists of time.

Erin McKean

#19. Lexicographers are language reporters.

Erin McKean

#20. And I don't like people who eat powdered doughnuts. I don't car how careful you are, they're just plain messy. I can't believe they taste good enough to justify getting that sugar all over everything, especially me.

Erin McKean

#21. She looked out at the other trees, and she realised that her life was one of thousands, any one of which could have been her, she had grown wherever her life had taken her, she had drifted wherever the wind had blown her.

Dave McKean

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

Michael McKean

#23. If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them.

Erin McKean

#24. 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.

Michael McKean

#25. If you want someone to stop listening to you go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper. -Mimi

Erin McKean

#26. I like being able to do anything. I think that's healthy, doing anything and everything, rather than just getting completely obsessed with one particular genre or particular kind of work.

Dave McKean

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

Michael McKean

#28. Most of the words you know and love and use every day are not words you learned by looking them up in a dictionary and reading a definition.

Erin McKean

#29. I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.

Dave McKean

#30. The rule is, don't speak of the dead, not don't speak ill of the dead's terrible relatives.

Erin McKean

#31. Language is a nice way to remember things.

Erin McKean

#32. A love letter is to be savored; a love email ... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at.

Erin McKean

#33. I think we would all like to believe that every new event demands a new word. But we're environmentally conscious with our words. We recycle words we've got.

Erin McKean

#34. Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying.

Erin McKean

#35. I like stories that exist both in the naturalistic world and in our imaginative lives, films are so immersive in that sense, we can explore how our characters think and dream, as well as how they exist in the real world.

Dave McKean

#36. I like someone who laughs, but not all the time, and not too loud. I like it when someone laughs at the world, and not at someone in particular - when some particularly absurd thing happens, not just someone falling down.

Erin McKean

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

Michael McKean

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

Michael McKean

#39. Uniforms are intended to make the wearer look as strong as possible. Soldiers could fight in leotards, but that's never going to happen because leotards aren't intimidating.

Erin McKean

#40. Words are so lovable. How could you not love words?

Erin McKean

#41. It's not even been a two-and-two-make five sort of day, it's more like a two-and-two-make ... fish

Dave McKean

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

Michael McKean

#43. Words take on many different meanings.

Erin McKean

#44. It doesn't really matter [if she ever wears the dress], as long as she loves it. She'll wear it a hundred times in her imagination before she even tries it on again. As long as she has the option of wearing it, she'll be happy.

Erin McKean

#45. When you just get fantasy stories that are about fairies or goblins, I just don't care. I'm never going to meet a goblin, it doesn't mean anything to me. So my definition of fantasy is very broad, it's anything to do with memory, or dreams, or ways of interpreting or making sense of the world.

Dave McKean

#46. If anything is guaranteed to annoy a lexicographer, it is the journalistic habit of starting a story with a dictionary definition.

Erin McKean

#47. The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds.

Dave McKean

#48. It's difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you're in. It's one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It's like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn't look to you like a real fashion trend.

Erin McKean

#49. I suppose cats have sayings like ... "A dead mouse ... has no entertainment value." How's that? Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it? Okay, how about ... "Red sky at night, time for a nap ... red sky in the morning ... time for a nap.

Dave McKean

#50. This isn't a thrift store ... We're not selling them something less expensive, we're selling them something more special. We have to tell them the story of what we're showing them. And then we have to show them how they can be the new heroine in the story.

Erin McKean

#51. Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles.

Erin McKean

#52. The use of food metaphors is really well established English ... Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale.

Erin McKean

#53. There are very few good ways to get publicity for a dictionary.

Erin McKean

#54. 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.

Michael McKean

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

Michael McKean

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

Michael McKean

#57. If you're talking about how you promoted synergy in an organization, that could mean you just got everybody together for donuts twice a week.

Erin McKean

#58. People say to me, 'How do I know if a word is real?' You know, anybody who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real.

Erin McKean

#59. Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely.

Dave McKean

#60. I love the silent era because you can see the rules being written, the grammar of film being created. Most of my films are in some way love letters to the silent era.

Dave McKean

#61. 'Aging' has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.

Erin McKean

#62. 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.

Michael McKean

#63. Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen.

Erin McKean

#64. Never put off until tomorrow that which may be avoided entirely.

Bill McKean

#65. Music is the space between the notes as much as the notes themselves; it's defined as much by silence as by sound.

James McKean

#66. All language is a popularity contest.

Erin McKean

#67. My stuff is generally quite collage-y anyway. So it's sort-of suited to gathering raw materials like shooting actors, then making stills or animating characters, then just bringing them all together in a 3D space. That process is very close to my 2D work anyway.

Dave McKean

#68. There are hundreds of thousands of words that aren't in any print dictionary today ... because there's no space for all of them.

Erin McKean

#69. Oh, sheep. I've lost all my sobbing colours.

Dave McKean

#70. Usually, the most difficult thing to do is photo-real stuff. Something that has to actually look like the real world, because it's just so difficult to do that. We're just so used to looking at the real world, our brains instantly see when something is not quite right.

Dave McKean

#71. Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult.

Erin McKean

#72. Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.

Erin McKean

#73. 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.

Michael McKean

#74. People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another.

Erin McKean

#75. If you say 'anti-aging,' how anti would it have to be, really? My guess is not much. Any amount of sunscreen could be considered anti-aging.

Erin McKean

#76. 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!

Michael McKean

#77. What I'm interested in is how people are reading and writing English.

Erin McKean

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

Michael McKean

#79. We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.

Erin McKean

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

Michael McKean

#81. It a heasy t'ing to live for de lightnin' crack hillumination of possession.
It heasy to hide in de dark o' faith, pretendin' dat anyt'in' dat skitter an' scuttle in de night is jus' bad himagination.
It a heasy t'in' jus' to stay where you at. Grow roots. Vegetate. Be a potato.

Dave McKean

#82. 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.

Michael McKean

#83. All words have life cycles.

Erin McKean

#84. We've been using 'rejuvenate,' meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years.

Erin McKean

#85. Most consumers don't have a good metric for deciding on whether the dictionary they want to use is a good one ... so they flip the book over, then go to the back, and it says, 'Over 250,000 entries.' And they go, 'Great, this dictionary must be awesome!'

Erin McKean

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

Michael McKean