Theater Quotes

There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface.

Lydia Maria Child, Letter; publi

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

Abbie Hoffman

I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.

Isadora Duncan, My Life, ch. 5,

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.

Sarah Bernhardt, The Art of the

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Thornton Wilder

Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare

I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there.

Kim Cattrall, Interview by Dan S

I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love. I will give all my soul to prove this once more.On painting new ceiling for the Paris Opera

Marc Chagall, October 14, 1963

For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.

Fanny Burney

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

Orson Welles

Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.

Agnes De Mille