Theatre Quotes

“Yes, I'd rather be shy than smart; a foolish diffidence constrains my heart. I reach for a star; then, from a morbid dread of ridicule, I pluck a flower instead.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“If we could once forget the conventional things, the roses, the pierced hearts, the fairy wings and get to something larger, something true; instead of sipping from exhausted springs to drink from the full river in its flow.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“Wit now would be to insult the night, nature itself, the jasmine scent, the moonlight; one glimpse of the heavens and their infinite spaces reveals the absurdity of our artifices. What scares me is that the alchemy we share may fail to distil true love, the real, the rare, wasting its time on fanciful pastimes while our sophistication destroys our dreams.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon
Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“~The actor is always laughing,' he said. 'It is the audience that is crying.'~”
― Jayne Tuttle, My Sweet Guillotine

“I loved it and have always loved it best of all, the moment when the lights go down, the curtain glows, you know that something wonderful is going to happen. It doesn't matter if what happens next spoils everything; the anticipation itself is always pure.
To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, as Uncle Perry used to say. I always preferred foreplay too.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“This is the shape of the love I offer you.
—Theatre”
― FinPoet

“Theatre is always a self-destructive art, and it is always written on the wind.”
― Peter Brook, The Empty Space

“আমি নগণ্য নাট্যকার, কেউ নাম শোনেনি আমার। আমার ক্ষেত্র থিয়েটার। সিনেমা দেখে থাকি, কিন্তু সিনেমায় অভিনয় করবার বা অন্য কিছু করবার ইচ্ছে কখনো জাগেনি মনে। আমার নাটক শম্ভু মিত্র গ্রহণ করলে উৎসাহিত হয়েছি, সিনেমার ক্ষেত্রে সেরকম কোনো উৎসাহ বোধ করিনি। পরে যখন একটু নামডাক হয়েছে, অনেকে প্রশ্ন করেছেন— সিনেমায় কিছু করবার ইচ্ছে বা চেষ্টা আছে কি না। সোজা বলে দিয়েছি— না, নেই। আরো কথা বাড়ালে বলেছি, "কিছু লোকের তো থিয়েটারে থাকা দরকার।”
― Badal Sircar, পুরোনো কাসুন্দি

“Will there be bears?"
"There will be two: white bears, as soft and heavy as snow, as fell as January, one beyond the other, like the mountains on the edge of Thule. They have waked. There is old fire in their bellies; yellow moonlight in their seeking eyes; blood only in their minds.”
― Greer Gilman, Exit, Pursued by a Bear

“Proscenium Panther by Stewart Stafford

The actor missed his line,
Whispers from the wings,
Deafening silence hanging,
Another cue came briskly.

A pregnant pause of years,
The frozen player’s lips moved,
Offstage, a mock post-mortem,
The thespian grinned impishly.

After the audience’s first line laugh,
He racked his brain for more jokes,
Flouting the text and all the cast,
O, limelight, of hot-headed hydras.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Life goes the easiest on the living, and the hardest on those who only wish to experience that life”
—Theatre”
― FinPoet

“Living taught me selfishness, it has taken so much from me, in spite of having nothing afterward, it sustained the habit of taking, going so far as to steal what I had left of myself.”
“I don’t understand, are you saying that life stole your will to live? Doesn't that contradict the meanings?”
“Living and life are not the same. Living is breathing, something you pave, dragging around a body absent of life until we run out of ways to cope with the exhaustion. Life kills the living, and death cleans the remains.”
—Theatre”
― FinPoet

“Why write for a dead person?”

“Why write for anyone? Whether a person is alive or dead, it doesn’t change how they should be remembered, even as their legacy loses its luster. What matters here is that you all will witness the story of the life he lived. As I have said before, the most sentimental masterpieces are those that can only be revisited in the mind.”

“What a wonderfully worded way to put it— it almost sounds like you are describing memories, rather than a masterpiece.”

“The memories we create are one of the greatest expressions of free will we have, but they are misinterpreted as events that only served to humble us, as a result of how often we tend to remember what hurt us. Those types of memories make the ones worth cherishing, seem like a subtle moment when we were just happy. Perhaps if those moments became iterations of time we could overtly value the hidden treasure of what it means to live. But for now, I think the best we can do is appreciate how strange and brief these masterpieces are.”
The breathing in the room stilled, even the pen on the notepad resting in the transcriber's lap stopped scribbling.
“...I see well…
Do you have any plans moving forward from the industry?”

“Nothing remarkable… I might visit the Brooklyn Bridge and admire the sun sinking into the horizon before I return home.”

“Taking time to alleviate grief is a good thing, I hope we will get the chance to cross paths in the future, even if it is a mere coincidence.”

“Maybe, but likely not, I will not be in New York tomorrow.”
― FinPoet

“If you want to practice theatre or any form of art, then go an sow a seed, plant a sapling, grow a tree. Then, go back after a decade and search for that life. If you don't find it, you will find a reason to practice art.”
― Niloy Roy

“Some actors are too intimidated to tackle the works of Shakespeare. When, in fact, it is the treasure trove they should be seeking out. There's the depth and complexity of Shakespeare's plays, the richness of the characterisations, the poetic beauty of the language, and the darkest villains in literature to get their teeth into.”
― Stewart Stafford

“If you want to practice theatre or any form of art, then go and sow a seed, plant a sapling, grow a tree. Then, go back after a decade and search for that life. If you don't find it, you will find a reason to practice art.”
― Niloy Roy

“A Nagyszínház bejárata előtt várakozó hintók egy része, miután felvették az utasaikat, egyesével a Borinszkij-rezidencia felé vették az irányt. Körülbelül húszfogatnyi úriember és hölgy kapott meghívót a mulatságra, melynek vendéglistáján a Hattyúk tava balett-táncosai is szerepeltek.”
― Nermin Bezmen, Kurt Seyt & Shura

“To crudely paraphrase a far more elegant apology than ours: Piece out our imperfections with your mind; think - when we speak of whale-boats, whales and oceans, that you see them - for 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our stage; jumping o'er time; turning the accomplishments of many years into an hour-glass...”
― Orson Welles, Moby Dick - Rehearsed

“ERIC: She looked like Gerry Adams without the beard.

BRIDGET: Ok...

ERIC: It is of course hard to imagine Gerry Adams without the beard. The Gerry Adams beard is part and parcel of the Gerry Adams persona. It symbolises his revolutionary ardour, his passion for constitutional change. And now as it whitens it cements his status as eminence grise, aging philosopher-king. But without the beard he'd look like she did to me that cold autumnal morning on Cyprus Avenue. Innocent. Irrelevant. Lost.”
― David Ireland, Cyprus Avenue

“I would just walk around, not looking for anything particular, looking for everything really, and ingesting and digesting it all. Art, music, theater, poetry, and the sense that everything was up for grabs, you just had to see what fit. I was desperate to live in New York and be an artist.”
― Debbie Harry, Face It

“Of course we all know that in rehearsal, without costume or make-up or scenery or lights, with just close attention on what's going on, a play is often revealed more excitingly than when it's dolled up and put into the theatre.”
― Ian McKellen, Ian McKellen on Macbeth: Performing Shakespeare

“Szkoły aktorskie z całego świata powinny się o mnie bić. Jestem tak dobra, że sama nie wiem, dla kogo gram.”
― Aleksandra Weretelnik

“addiction."
he newelers talk about trades nihie
He was silent for a moment, then asked, "Does it make you
happy?"
even thouch it's supposedobatie
"Sorry?"
"Does it make you happy?"
sma-like the dock in An iLe.
I opened my mouth to respond- yes seemed the only pos-
I ways."
sible answer- but then I closed it again, uncertain. I cleared my throat and spoke more cautiously. "I won't pretend it's not
e said, after a moments conte
difficult. We're always working and we don't sleep much and it's
ting Caesar in schod. lige
hard to have normal friendships outside of our sphere, but it's
us through it I mushed
worth it just for the rush we get, being onstage and speaking
ins punished or sonate.)
Shakespeare's words. It's like we're not really alive until then, and
r if its augh pout
don't want to be anywhere else."
then everything just lights up and the bad stuff disappears and we
hat makes a kid sho hakespear:
He sat inhumanly still, keen gray eyes fixed on mine. "You paint a very good picture of addiction.”
― M. L. Rio

“He was silent for a moment, then asked, "Does it make you happy?"
"Sorry?"
"Does it make you happy?"
I opened my mouth to respond- yes seemed the only possible answer- but then I closed it again, uncertain. I cleared my throat and spoke more cautiously. "I won't pretend it's not difficult. We're always working and we don't sleep much and it's hard to have normal friendships outside of our sphere, but it's worth it just for the rush we get, being onstage and speaking Shakespeare's words. It's like we're not really alive until then, and then everything just lights up and the bad stuff disappears and we don't want to be anywhere else."
He sat inhumanly still, keen gray eyes fixed on mine. "You paint a very good picture of addiction.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“It pleases her immensely that she has created this. It reminds her of playing with the cardboard theatre in the attic, how her favourite part was lying on the floor, doing the voices, making the characters interact, and watching Digby and the Veg lying on their fronts, faces propped in their hands, transfixed by the story, as if it were unfolding all by itself. It was a conjurer's magic, a divine power.”
― Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre

“She looks again at the performance, at how everyone involved is concentrating on the same aim, from the principal dancer spinning centre stage, to the unseen man high in the rafters controlling the spotlight, to the patient percussionist counting out the empty bars of space before his single soft tink on the triangle. It moves her the way that stories about soldiers uniting to go into battle move her, a collective endeavour in service of a single cause. She would like very much to be a part of that. No. She would like very much to be in charge of that.”
― Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre

“The thing I love about Edna, compared to Cello’s Prom Date or Little Shop’s Mrs. Luce, is that she is such a wonderful, well-rounded (pun not intended) character. I felt that Mrs. Luce and the Prom Date were one note characters, whether they were played by a man or a woman - but were definitely played for laughs by throwing me in a wig and dress, that playing Edna was a breath of fresh hairspray…I mean air. She was actually developed into a human being; she loves her husband and her daughter, she has her fears about how the world would view her and her daughter for being overweight, disappointment that her hopes and dreams didn’t come true (explaining why she is strict with Tracy), and the pride she feels when Tracy becomes successful.”
― Michael J. Mantsourani, Life is Staged: A Memoir on Finding Myself in High School Theater

“and if you think God or fate, fortune or
any assortment of sentimental
somesuch rescued you oh my delightful
little charmer, what a savage surprise
is the rest of your life going to be”
― Anne Washburn, Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

“and if you think God or fate, fortune or
any assortment of sentimental
somesuch rescued you oh my delightful
little charmer, what a savage surprise
is the rest of your life going to be”
― Anne Washburn, Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play