Quotes from Marcel Marceau

All wars are criminal.

Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

I wouldn't imagine I would become famous in America for my talk shows.

Never get a mime talking. He won't stop.

Life is a cycle, and mime is particularly suitable for showing fluidity, transformation, metamorphosis. Words can keep people apart; mime can be a bridge between them.

In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand. This is the gift given to creative individuals who can identify with the mysteries of life through art.

In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.

Fathers, I do not practice. I'm not religious in life, but when I perform "The Creation of the World" and when my soul is touched by the confrontation of "Good and Evil," then God enters in me.

Mime is an art beyond words. It is the art of the essential. And you cannot lie. You have to show the truth.

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?

I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.

What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.

In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.

With time, art developed Bip, my alter ego. He was not only a lion tamer or a street musician but a soldier revealing the tragedy of ephemeral life.

The great problem of humanity is life and death. Every person dreams of becoming invisible one day.

I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.

I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.

Silence in the turmoil of the theater world made me survive 50 years without speaking on a stage, only to say 'No' in Mel Brooks' film, 'Silent Movie.'

Dance is in the air, pirouettes, very difficult. Mime is on the floor, like Spanish dancing perhaps, and very often in slow motion.

When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.

It's good to shut up sometimes.