Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting |
When actors go onstage, you know immediately if they can do their job. You can be a lawyer or an accountant for years and not find out. |
Patsy | Rodenburg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
I learned acting by doing it. And although I had never taken an acting class, it didn't take long to learn how to be on the stage. All you have to do is to be humiliated in front of an audience a few times. If you don't like being humiliated publicly, you learn how to act. |
Ron | Vawter | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success upon the stage. And I am still of the same opinion. Imagination, industry [hard work], and intelligence--the three I's--are all indispensable to the actor, but of these three the greatest is, without any doubt, imagination. |
Ellen | Terry | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model. |
George | Lewes | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
The important talent is the talent to develop one's talent. |
Howard | Stein | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
I started writing for the theatre because I hated it. |
Eugene | Ionesco | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage. |
Anton | Chekhov | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers. |
George Jean | Nathan | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick. |
Moss | Hart | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| General, Management |
This is a non-commercial theatre. It's got to be run by a person who sees right from the start that the profits won't be money profits. [On the idea of a Federal Theatre Project, 1934] |
Harry | Hopkins | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
