Edna Ferber Quotes

I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.

You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.

I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.

Only by love is life made real.

Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?

That's what I miss, being a real human.

In acting class, you talked always about keeping it real and don't act... connect with the people and connect with the partner that you're acting with. The same is also true in politics.

It's really important to take time for yourself because if you don't know what it is like to be a real person and spend time with a sense of normality, how can you play normal people in films?

I hope people come to the shows because they feel like there's something there that I can't necessarily articulate, but it's real and it's fun.

The true theater, because it moves and makes use of living instruments, continues to stir up shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way.

I don't have anything that dramatic as far as a performance goes. I've never participated in a show that ended in a fight in my memory.

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

To hear an artist be transparent is one of the greatest things they could ever do for their fans. I love that, when I see my fans on the road we have real conversations and it's not even that I do it as some big ploy to have album sales. I do it because it's important for them to understand who I am. So, whatever backlash comes along with me being transparent, there's nothing I can do about it.

I miss theater. I miss living the arc of the character, from curtain to curtain, and I miss the immediate audience response.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

What good is it if a guy can sing real good but he sits on his ass and doesn't make anybody feel anything? I can connect with an audience every time I play. When I sing, they listen.

I love going to plays. There's a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can't entirely explain why.

If you're a real hip-hop fan and a real street music fan, and you just love good music, you're gonna play it from top to bottom, and you're gonna get the concept, you're gonna get the story of my life, you're gonna be entertained, you're gonna dance you're gonna feel emotion, you're gonna get the truth, whether you like it or hate it.

Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. Trust is real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being.

I have friends who will say, "Oh you gotta come and see our show." And the first thing I say is, "Is it sketch or improv?" I'll go in a minute to see a sketch show. I love sketch; it's my favorite form. But if it's all improv, they're either very good and it's annoying how good they are and it makes you feel bad, or they're not too good then you're sweating for them. And you don't want to sweat for them, see actors repeating each other's lines.

Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part.

If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then and only then will I drop my defenses and hostility, and I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.