Top 50 Michael K. Williams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I use my job to engage empathy and compassion for people society might stereotype or ostricise.”

— Michael K. Williams

2. “The most successful people reach the top not because they are free of limitations, but because they act in spite of their limitations.”

— Michael K. Williams

3. “Cajun culture is dying.”

— Michael K. Williams

4. “I am the epitome of the underdog. By societies standards I should have been dead a long time ago, and I was nobody’s gangster, I wasn’t a thug, I wasn’t selling drugs on the corner – I was scared of that.”

— Michael K. Williams

5. “You know, my childhood was pretty colorful; I like to use the word ’turbulent.”

— Michael K. Williams

6. “I don’t dabble in politics too much. I’m really ignorant to the world of politics. I’m not that smart, I’m not that cunning, it’s just too much smoke and mirrors for me. I just don’t want to play that game.”

— Michael K. Williams

7. “Ending a television character that you’ve been, especially someone like Omar Little, it hurts. For me, it’s a huge thing. You feel like a part of you is gone.”

— Michael K. Williams

8. “I know nothing of what it is to be a gangster.”

— Michael K. Williams

9. “If you’ve ever felt oppressed on any level, there’s something from ‘The Wire’ that you can take and identify with.”

— Michael K. Williams

10. “Doing something that warrants the attention of the President of the United States is super cool.”

— Michael K. Williams

11. “Everyone has art in them.”

— Michael K. Williams

12. “No one wakes up one day and decides they want to become a drug dealer or they want to be a stick-up kid. Those decisions are made after a series of events have happened in one’s life.”

— Michael K. Williams

13. “I absolutely miss dancing. Don’t want to do it for a living, I’m getting old, I can’t move like I used to. If I had the opportunity to do something on Broadway or a musical, I would jump at the opportunity.”

— Michael K. Williams

14. “Music’s been part of my entire life. It’s in my DNA.”

— Michael K. Williams

15. “Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love.”

— Michael K. Williams

16. “My only goal is to stay focused on my craft and make sure my life is as sharp as it can be to attack any character that is given to me.”

— Michael K. Williams

17. “Having been through the muck and mire, I’ve had my own brush with bad choices.”

— Michael K. Williams

18. “I do happen to love Honey Nut Cheerios. I don’t know if I want to walk down to the store in my pajamas for them. But I do love them.”

— Michael K. Williams

19. “I know plenty of adults who act like teenagers.”

— Michael K. Williams

20. “The streets would have chewed me up and spit me out and I knew that, but I found my own ways and different knacks for getting in trouble and being reckless with my life. And I’ve overcome a lot of personal demons and to be alive is really my greatest achievement.”

— Michael K. Williams

21. “The arts saved my life.”

— Michael K. Williams

22. “As we say in the hood, I’m a stoop kid.”

— Michael K. Williams

23. “I’m more liable to hurt myself than someone else.”

— Michael K. Williams

24. “I am a dark-skinned, nappy-headed, scar-faced dude from the streets of Brooklyn. I can’t hide from being who I am. It’s all over my face.”

— Michael K. Williams

25. “I don’t believe in typecasting. Just because all my characters may come from the other side of the tracks doesn’t mean they are all the same. You don’t stereotype people and generalize people, everyone’s different.”

— Michael K. Williams

26. “I grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn which was an intense neighbourhood filled with different West Indian cultures.”

— Michael K. Williams

27. “My goal as an actor, as an up-and-coming actor in this business is to stay consistent with the work and if you do good work, and stay focused on the work, writers and directors will pay attention.”

— Michael K. Williams

28. “I came out the womb dancing.”

— Michael K. Williams

29. “I’m totally comfortable today with the success that Omar and ‘The Wire’ have brought me – living with that character, being recognized and remembered for that character.”

— Michael K. Williams

30. “You know, Tupac is very near and dear to my heart. He started my career as an actor.”

— Michael K. Williams

31. “Revenge is not a positive state of mind or energy to indulge your self in.”

— Michael K. Williams

32. “I haven’t had a problem with being typecast, but if I was only getting one type of role, I wouldn’t mind. What I’m worried about is not working.”

— Michael K. Williams

33. “I come to work on time. I focus on my job. I bust my scenes out and everything else kind of happens from there.”

— Michael K. Williams

34. “My job is to bring to life the character, not to put the words on the paper.”

— Michael K. Williams

35. “My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us.”

— Michael K. Williams

36. “I don’t consider myself a person of fashion because it’s too sophisticated. My thing is I look at style like swagger. I like things that pull me, that I gravitate to.”

— Michael K. Williams

37. “I’m looking for diversity, all my characters may or may not be on the wrong side of the tracks. It doesn’t mean that they’re all the same.”

— Michael K. Williams

38. “For me, my past characters been hard, the way they died, being murdered, the sadness that goes around, the death. It’s a very hard thing to do.”

— Michael K. Williams

39. “All my characters have playlists.”

— Michael K. Williams

40. “I got picked on a lot as a kid.”

— Michael K. Williams

41. “I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear.”

— Michael K. Williams

42. “I’m good with all my roles, I’ve never had a bad role.”

— Michael K. Williams

43. “You have to put your character to rest after x amount of years.”

— Michael K. Williams

44. “I once heard the saying I’ve never met a strong person with an easy past. Those who have been through the gauntlet survive for a reason.”

— Michael K. Williams

45. “Show me a struggling man and I’ll show you a boy never given a chance to change.”

— Michael K. Williams

46. “Getting out only matters if you take your blessings, your hard-fought wisdom, your scarred humanity, and go back in.”

— Michael K. Williams

47. “A man gotta live what he know, right? – Omar Little.”

— Michael K. Williams

48. “By the time I entered high school, I already felt like damaged goods. Injured by my father’s absence, roughed-up by my mother’s hard love, and too meek to stand up for myself, I was a ripe target. After two men in positions of authority – one from school and one from church – molested me, I fell.”

— Michael K. Williams

49. “I remember the first lotion my mother ever put on my face was a bleaching cream called Artra, to lighten my skin. My defiance, my darkness, my weakness – they were all fodder for my mother. I learned to perform from an early age, imitating what I thought she wanted to see, hiding who I truly was. But it was never enough.”

— Michael K. Williams

50. “Every addict, every alcoholic has a self-loathing; we bathe ourselves in that. It’s the way for the addiction to keep us on the ropes, keep us connected to the darkness. It fuels off of it.”

— Michael K. Williams