Quotes About Performance

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?

one must love the Circus and despise the world.

Fascism is theater.

L'Albin, avec sa procession de joueurs d'harmonicas

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know.

Real acting is never personal.

Polaire! The agitating and agitated Polaire! The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness ...

we have little empirical knowledge about the connection between merit and success

We need to move from a culture focused on monitoring the worker's presence to a culture focused on the results.

They could play married, both happy and unhappy, like no other acting couple have ever played married. They're the Lunts of the American marriage movie.

Joanne Woodward's Mrs. Bridge is one of the best performances ever given on film of a middle-aged woman.

Ladies and dogs," said Jeffrey, "we are about to perform 'Fanfare for the Uncommon Seal.' " "With apologies to Aaron Copland,

For this whole dualistic universe thing to work, it's important that everyone doesn't just go wandering off; that they stay on stage and play their role. Fear is the glue that holds the whole thing together and keeps everyone in character.

On certain social occasions, otherwise dignified and serious men will begin behaving unconsciously like players on a stage, performing as they talk, acting as they gesticulate. The cause is invariably a woman.

She spoke with the air of the artist, playing out each nuance until it wasn't a nuance anymore.

students suffer from page fright.

worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs. It doesn't seem to matter how great the best member is,

Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution.

As a human being, he might not have been lovable—or even likable—but as a performer, he possessed unsurpassed talents that he honed through a lifetime of practice. On Sunday afternoons, he shared his gifts with millions, enabling them to forget reality and vicariously experience thrills that were more exhilarating than anything felt in a church pew.

A large part of acting is just pretending. You get to work with these other great make-believers, all making believe as hard as they can.

Movies are like magic tricks.

It's funny. You succeed, but now where are you gonna go from there? I've got to keep proving that I can laugh or cry more real each time.

Any role that big is going to be a challenge for any actor, but for an actor of a young age, it's going to be even tougher.