Michael Emerson Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  "Actor Michael Emerson". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 16, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• That's a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they're used to being in the position of power. So they'll just take over, and we'll lose the one thing we do have.

  Michael Emerson

  Moving, Position Of Power, Black

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

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

  Michael Emerson

  Dream, Blessed, Play

  9 Copy quote

• 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, People

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• There's a lot of terminology, like "washes whiter than snow," and these things which when they're said in a uniracial congregation, they just go fine. But when they're said in a mixed congregation, some people will get offended and wonder, "Why are you saying that? What are you saying?"

  Michael Emerson

  People, Snow, Wonder

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

  Michael Emerson

  Use, Complicated, Sometimes

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• We're going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I'll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white.

  Michael Emerson

  Black And White, Together, Why Not

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• What's happening is that Asian and Latino and other groups without that history are more likely to end up in either black churches or white churches and then make them multiracial churches. I talk about that in the US we have two cultures.

  Michael Emerson

  Two, White, Black

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it's] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture.

  Michael Emerson

  Two, White, Black

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I'll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I'm in somebody else's homeland. So I'm going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean.

  Michael Emerson

  Giving Up, Moving, Mean

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• But in the US, when you have two separate cultures, each with its right, each of which has come to exist in this political entity in the last couple hundred years, each feeling like, "I have the right to hold onto my culture," and that's what makes it difficult.

  Michael Emerson

  Couple, Two, Years

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they'll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn't mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time.

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, White, Laughing

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don't.

  Michael Emerson

  Matter, Bigger, Wells

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things we find when we talk to people that attend these congregations, they all have social cost to it. People want to know why they're doing that. Sometimes they're questions about selling out on their race or "Are we not good enough that you have to go to this kind of congregation and not ours?" So there are costs to it, and I think they're a little bit higher in the South because of its history.

  Michael Emerson

  Thinking, Race, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• It happens a little bit more in the West, where there's more fluid - where everybody's originally from somewhere else. So they have a little bit more permission to do it. It happens the least, at the individual level at least, in the South, because the South has very strong, you know, set up black churches and white churches and a long history of that, and so it's a bigger social cost.

  Michael Emerson

  Strong, Somewhere Else, White

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it's difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.

  Michael Emerson

  Believe, Book, Impact

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• There are three things, and it depends on the group that we're talking about, but there's history, there's culture, and then there's social networks. So, you know, historically black and white, they worship together until about the end of slavery, and people started moving out into separate churches. But it was because of discrimination and racism and such that blacks began to establish their own denominations and their own churches.

  Michael Emerson

  Moving, Black And White, Talking

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• So it may be a language that separates you - again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.

  Michael Emerson

  Church, Asian, Generations

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there's something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.

  Michael Emerson

  Church, Study, Yeah

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn't feel that warmly received. But so - and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

  Michael Emerson

  Reality, White, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.

  Michael Emerson

  Average, White, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Call-and-response style, yes, exactly. So whenever different groups get together then there has to be this long period of negotiation. How will we worship? What's acceptable? What's not? If I want to say "Amen" can I?

  Michael Emerson

  Long, Style, Together

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin