Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with. "

Related Quotes:

" Everybody wants to be known. Everybody's a Kardashian. "

" When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he like Bentleys? "

" I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.' "

" I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things. "

" That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it. "

" A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't. "

" The only safe thing is to take a chance. "

" I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really. "

" The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies forever. It's what we wish we could do in real life. "

" The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week. "

" A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things. "

" There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love. "

Falling In Love

" I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when. "

" I loved all movies, literally. I certainly loved 'Shane' and 'Roxie Hart.' Later on, when I was less of a kid, I loved 'L'Avventura' and 'Persona' and all Fellini movies and like everybody else I loved John Ford. Then and now, I loved Preston Sturges, maybe above anyone. "

" Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them. "

" 'Streetcar' is no longer about the moment at all. There is no Blanche DuBois anywhere; south, north, east or west. We don't have Blanche DuBois at the moment. But we have Willy Loman; everywhere we look we see Willy Loman. We are Willy Loman. We're on Facebook; we need to be known; we're selling all the time. "

" You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted. "

" The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity? "

" Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile. "

" Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for you. "

" 'Catch-22' was a nightmare to make, and everybody was unhappy except me. "

" If you're fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and you're a Jew, you don't think so much about relationships. People didn't have a lot of divorces during the Holocaust, for instance. "

" There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw. "

" Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now. "

" In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was. "

" All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. "

" I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine. "

" Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they come and see it and say, 'That's nice', and then they go home. "

" I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein. "

" Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though. "