"Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous." ~Stella Adler

"An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words." ~Sanford Meisner

"You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen." ~Ben Kingsley

"Do not be full of yourself, but be full of your part." ~Boucicault

"In your choice is your talent." ~Adler

"The Play is the Master and I am it's Whore!  ~Charles Jeffries

"Thus play I in one play many persons."     ~shakie

"The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character."  ~Jean-Louis Barrault

"An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow."   ~Lawrence Barrett

"Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretive one."   ~Paul Newman

"The teeth lie, the hair deceives, but the wrinkles tell the truth."    ~Old Spanish Proverb

"Acting is the art of speaking in a loud, clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture."    ~Alfred Lunt

"An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham."    ~Oscar Wilde

"I love acting. It is so much more real than life."    ~Oscar Wilde

"What are we going to do for the rest of our lives? Sit and watch the parade go by? Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie?"    ~From Glass Menagerie

"All the world's a stage and the men and women on it merely players."   ~Shakespeare

"There is as much difference between the stage and films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both."  ~Ethel Barrymore, 1956

"In London, theatregoers expect to laugh; in Paris, they wait grimly for proof that they should."  ~Robert Dhery, 1958

"Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks / Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks / The founder's you; the table is this place / The carvers we; the prologue is the grace / Each act a course, each scene, a different dish." ~George Farquhar, 1702

"You need three things in the theatre -- the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something."  ~Kenneth Haigh, 1958

"We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it."   ~Charles Lamb, 1823

"It's called acting." ~Lawrence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman.

(In attempting to research this quote, I found this on imdb.com:  Upon learning that his Marathon Man costar Dustin Hoffman had stayed awake for two days to look properly exhausted in one scene, he told the younger actor, "You should try acting, my boy. It's much easier.")

"Theatre takes place all the time -- wherever one is -- and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case."   ~John Cage, 1961

"In my plays I want to look at life -- at the commonplace of existence -- as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time."  ~Christopher Fry, 1950

"The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated."    ~H. L. Mencken, 1919

"The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost." ~Arthur Miller, 1958

"Great drama is the souvenir of the adventure of a master among the pieces of his own soul."  ~George Jean Nathan, 1923

"It is the destiny of the theatre nearly everywhere and in every period to struggle even when it is flourishing."  ~Howard Taubman, 1964

"We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it."  ~Thornton Wilder, 1958

"If you can't act, behave!"  ~John Igo

"You know...I worked in the theatre for five years before I learned that 'F***ing Electricians' was really TWO words."

"There are two impulses in theatre: to be frivolous or to make rules." ~Tadashi Suzuki

"Realism is something we practice when we aren't feeling very well. When we don't feel up to the extra effort." ~Robert Edmund Jones

"Cruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness." ~Antonin Artaud

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~Goethe

"Creativity is first of all an act of destruction." ~Picasso

"When you feel ten in your heart...express seven." ~Zeami : Japanese originator of Noh drama

"Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act." ~Charles Jeffries

"The object is freedom." ~Anne Bogart

Lots More Quotes Here:  aact.org

Charles Jeffries, Linda Shuler, Anna Gangai, Laurie Dietrich, W. Chris Champlin - Thank you for providing your favorite quotes.  Do you have one to add?  email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it