Lawrence Ferlinghetti Quotes

Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.

If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.

I did things with the microphone stand that no-one else has attempted to do.

I like pushing the envelope. I like pushing myself and the audience, whether it's a TV show or live. I like to throw people over the edge of the cliff and scare the wits out of them, but then pull them back and make them safe.

You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.

I think I'm actually much too shy to do any performance art. I admire the big swings those guys take, but I'm not a one-man band.

I tend to make bolder and more interesting choices after I've done theatre.

You can get bored up there on stage, night after night. But it's an open forum where you can get away with almost anything, so you might as well do it.

So much about getting onstage is creating a connection with an audience that allows you to go different places and try different things.

If you haven't truly died a million times as a comic you haven't gigged enough!

I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.

The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

I feel that if you're going to do theater, you've really got to throw yourself into the deep end. You have to commit your whole life and soul to it to make it the best it could ever be because theater can truly change people in lots of different ways. But I also think it can bore people to death, and it's quite a fine line between those two things.

Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.

Stunts are my favourite - I love it: the feeling, the adrenaline when all the cameras are rolling and everyone is watching and crowd round.

As an actor, I have always believed that content is the king, and I have always put my neck on the line to choose cinema that is off the beaten track.

We turned Cambridge theatre upside down, using odd spaces and devising everything collaboratively. It eventually blew apart, but I'm still proud of some of what we achieved. The style was very disciplined, and we had the sense to keep things short.

As a child, I was mischievous and an attention-seeker, so acting came naturally to me.

Comedy is very tough to do, it never gets the awards but it's the toughest task.

Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.

I can try new genres because I know there are fans who will always be there to support what I would like to pursue.

I loved DDT for the freedom; I was able to tell the wackiest and wildest of stories but also test myself as an athlete.

I will always accept good films that require demanding performances.

I reached a point where nothing scares me in this industry, mainly because I grew up in it. My earliest memory is 4 years old, getting in a wrestling ring.

For me personally, my favourite part of performing is just going in the crowd and doing crazy things that they never expected to see. Challenging myself to do new things that I never expected to do. That's the biggest thing for me.