Thornton Wilder Quotes

A play is a passion.

I just love acting.

Movies have takes. But plays are like life - you don't really get takes.

Of course, actors look forward to the day when they can do a big courtroom scene.

From my point of view, there is a lot of joy in stage work.

When you're in a play like 'Kean,' you can't think of anything else. Love is too time-consuming.

From the first audition on stage, I knew I loved acting.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

I see theater as a simple formula. Audience plus players plus story makes the play.

I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting.

Where every moment is about truth and I think it's a great challenge every night. That's what really drove me to wanting to do theatre, and it's great.

I started out in theatre, and there's no better feeling than the adrenaline of being on stage.

I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.

I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy.

The first play that I saw was 'Cyrano,' and I remember going home - I was like nine years old - and trying to learn the monologues.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make'em laugh and make'em cry. It's all theater.

Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience.

I can't take the theater side out of myself.

I played comedies and dramas.

But what is drama? Broadly speaking, it is whatever by imitative action rouses interest or gives pleasure.

I will never leave the theater. My heart is there, and I love being on stage 8 times a week.

The stage is my first love.

The stage is my love, it's where I started and where I do my best work.

And when I go to see plays, I marvel at how people can do that. I've done it all my life, but I still find it mystical.

I played Big Mama in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' when I was 20 years old at the University of Michigan.