Inspirational Quotations
“Learn the lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” || “Just say the lines and don’t trip over the furniture.”
“There are no small parts only small actors.” || “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”
“Do not try to push your way through to the front of the ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards, but do your utmost to find your entry into the world of beauty.”
“Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part.”
This quote can inspire many answers to many questions an actor may have:
“To be or not to be”
Hamlet’s advice to the Players is holds true today:
“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action” || “Hold the mirror up to nature”
“As an actor you need three things, energy and luck and talent.” || “Everyone who aspires to be a class actor has a Hamlet somewhere inside him.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the opportunity to make those three films that didn’t do well. They were really important to me, and the things I learned doing them were important to me.” || “Family is not an important thing, it’s everything.”
“I love the camaraderie of doing theatre that you don’t get in film.”
“And I discovered after a couple years that I really didn’t miss making movies.”
“The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.”
“It’s sort of the most important thing for acting, is to listen to the person you’re dealing with.”
“I think of doing a series as very hard work. But then I’ve talked to coal miners, and that’s really hard work.”
“I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, ‘Remember how good this is, because you can lose it.’” || “Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.”
“Never give up. Take what life throws at you and throw it right back. If life keeps throwing then you have a tennis match going. Learn to like tennis.”
“I don’t find Hollywood interesting, so I’m thinking of studying architecture instead.”
“I don’t have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.”
“I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don’t understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.”
“Life beats down and crushes our souls and theatre reminds us that we have one. At least the type of theatre that I’m interested in, that is theatre that moves an audience. You have the opportunity to literally impact the lives of people if they work on material that has integrity. But today, most actors simply want to be famous. Well, being an actor was never supposed to be about fame and money. Being an actor is a religious calling because you’ve been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.”
“What are you playing? What are you doing?”
“To go into acting is like asking for permission to enter an insane asylum.”
“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t’were his own.”
“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader; a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.”
“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”
“One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We’re not scientists. We don’t always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.”
“To act is to give. You give gifts to your audience. You expose your vulnerability and share yourself, warts and all. You are giving love.”
“Imagination is Freedom.”
“Teach Only Love for that is what you are.”
“I know of no more encouraging fact then the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
“May our joys resemble holy ceremonies; from the depths of our being, let acclamations ring. Let us discard the old, that all things may be new; our hearts, our voices, our works”
Nina in The Seagull: “You have no idea how unbearable it is to know that you are acting badly and you can’t do anything about it” || “To work on your art, work on your life.”
“If it looks wrong … it is! The audience sees what you see.”
“Everybody has a great voice. Always remember, with voice work, your voice is unique to you. Don’t try to sound like somebody else. Somebody already sounds like that! Work truthfully from your feelings and you cannot go wrong.”
“Art is collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.”
“Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.”
“The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.”
“The aliveness is within your own body and there is no earthly reason to fight it.”
“Only when we forget our inherent creativity do we feel blocked or stifled.”
“Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego.”