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" I never planned to be an actor. It turned out I could make a living doing it. "

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" Contrary to the popular misconception, the actor is not necessarily a specialist in imitating or portraying what he knows about other people. On the contrary, the actor may simply be a person who's more willing than others to reveal some truths about himself. "

" We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage. "

" After being in one movie, it didn't seem like that would be my life. I had done several jobs, briefly. I'd been a shipping clerk, I worked in a copy shop, I didn't think the acting was going to go on and on. "

" I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. "

" I think the whole system of education would change if I were in charge and had the ability to make changes. I don't think I would keep Princeton exactly being Princeton. "

" My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds. "

" My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange. "

" I have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years. "

" Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life. "

" I know that I am one and I've made a living as an actor and I enjoy being an actor, but when I'm not actually doing it, I forget that I do it. "

" I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year. "

" I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they're laughing. "

" In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that. "

" When I was first starting to write plays, I quite literally had never heard of the idea of studying playwriting. I wouldn't have studied it even if I had heard of it. "

" For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. "

" In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art's sake. I didn't necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would. "

" As writers, we can't predict who might come along who might find our offerings valuable. "

" You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more. "

" Interestingly, the actress who, in her own persona, may be gentle, shy, and socially awkward, someone whose hand trembles when pouring a cup of tea for a visiting friend, can convincingly portray an elegant, cruel aristocrat tossing off malicious epigrams in an eighteenth-century chocolate house. "

" I spend most of my time thinking about things like laundry and buying stationery supplies. "

" I grew up. I began to think the United States had some problems that really required the help of artistic people to solve. And I gave myself permission to be a writer instead of a civil servant. "

" I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally, so I don't know what's funny about a character... This happens to be a feature of my life generally. "

" Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard. "

" I have been vain since birth. "

" I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write. "

" I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people's mothers around the world, they wouldn't commit the crimes they commit. "

" From being a writer of plays, it was not that surprising that somebody thought of giving me a job as an actor. After I played one part, others came along. "

" 'The Fever' is a one-person play. I decided I would perform it myself, and I decided I would not perform it in theaters, because the character in the play says certain things that I meant. "

" In an amusement park, you can go on a roller coaster that carries you up and down, or you can go on another kind of ride that whirls you around in a circle. Similarly, there are different sorts of entertaining experiences in the theater. "

" I started writing plays in around 1967, and at a certain point, I thought, 'I'm writing plays, I should learn about acting and what it is.' So I went to the HB Studio in New York, and I was there for about nine months. "