Great Throughts Treasury

"Don't waste your time striving for perfection, instead, strive for excellence -- doing your best."

"Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult."

"Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness."

"Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real."

"I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture."

"I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself."

"I like Paris. My problem is I don't like Parisians."

"I often think that could we creep behind the actor's eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book."

"I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act."

"I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it."

"I take a simple view of living. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it."

"Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity."

"I believe in the theater; I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size."

"Have a very good reason for everything you do."

"I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman. Or a workwoman."

"If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey."

"I'm rather bored by the subject-meaning me. It's a sort of a yoke, but at times you know, a yoke is a kind of comfort. And it's always there."

"My dear boy, why don't you try acting? (on the set of 'Marathon Man', to Dustin Hoffman, who had announced that he'd gone 3 days without sleep in order to 'become' his character)"

"Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word."

"My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself."

"If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life- it's an exhalation of life and I think I you probably need a little touch of madness."

"It's just like a nursery game of make-believe."

"I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman."

"Lead the audience by the nose to the thought."

"Of all the things I've done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It's the most exciting and the nearest that an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor... can possibly get to being a creator."

"Of all the things I've done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It's the most exciting and the nearest that an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor can possibly get to being a creator."

"Relax your feet."

"The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand."

"The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass."

"Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it."

"There is a spirit in us that makes our brass to blare and our cymbals crash-all, of course, supported by the practicalities of trained lung power, throat, heart, guts."

"We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings."

"We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses."

"Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength."

"What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying? [The only acting advice he would ever give.]"

"We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act."

"What is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?"

"When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part."

"Without acting I cannot breathe."

"Work is life for me, it is the only point of life-and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything."