acting

The best audience is intelligent well-educated and a little drunk.

On stage I make love to twenty-five thousand people then I go home alone.

An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.

Working in the theatre has a lot in common with unemployment.

You need three things in the theatre - the play the actors and the audience and each must give something.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

I know it was wonderful but I don't know how I did it.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

There are some great roles - mostly in Shakespeare's tragedies which no one can play at full strength from beginning to end. One simply hopes that one can hit the peaks as often as one has the strength.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

All the movies used to be 'colossal'. Now they're all 'frank'. I think I liked 'colossal' better.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters but telegrams.

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.

Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down unless you're a king.