Quotes from Uta Hagen

Marlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.

Awards don't really mean much.

I'm a bad liar; I don't know what to say backstage.

To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.

The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious

Once in awhile, there's stuff that makes me say, That's what theatre's about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often.

I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don't go.

Usually, someone who's in a show gets me a ticket. I feel cornered. I can't walk out if I don't like it.

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.

We had a relationship that lasted 44 years. Herbert and I lived together 10 years before we were married. He always gave me a little heart for whatever anniversary.

Working with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.

I love going to the movies; I love watching good movie actors. They must know something I don't.

I love playing Chekhov. That's the hardest; that's why I love it most.

If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn't be an actor. You're in the wrong profession.

Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country.

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. envision the future.

The need to be loved and protected is at a peak when we feel abandoned and are particularly vulnerable to difficult circumstances.

Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen. Talent alone is not enough. Character and ethics, a point of view about the world in which you live and an education, can and must be acquired and developed.

It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.

The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious. And I am grateful.

Overcome the notion that we must be regular; it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary.

no work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps.