Buster Keaton Quotes

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.

I've been in scenarios as an actor where you have to manufacture an emotion that's not really there, but it wasn't hard with Halle because she's a great person and very beautiful, so it ain't a tough job at the end of the day.

People think I am unemotional because my voice is flat and a bit boring. It is unfortunate but it is just the way it is. I've tried to change it but it doesn't seem to make a difference. The truth is, I have lots of emotions inside. I cried after the semi-final at Wimbledon [2012] because I was proud to reach the final and I knew how much it meant to the country. I cried after the [losing] final [to Federer], too, for different reasons. I felt I had let people down. I think people warmed to that. They could see how much it hurt.

I don't get a chance to cry that often on film, so I was hoping that talent would come my way, that day. I cheated, I guess, when I just started looking at my technology device - my iPhone - to look at pictures of my kids, before I did the scene where I had to cry. That was a good trick that I found.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.

Every time you play a bad girl or guy in a movie, you really come from a place of pain.

I don't have to come up with a ha-ha belly laugh every day, but drawings with warmth and love or ones that put a lump in the throat. That's more important to me than a laugh.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

It's funny because, if you're not an actor, people always tend to say, 'How do you memorize all those lines? Is that really hard?' I'm always like, 'That's just a small part of it. I have to seek my craft and my emotions' - you know, all this gross, actor-y stuff.

I don't think you can cry if the script is rubbish. I have to feel it; it's as simple as that. It's just like if you're watching something moving, and you feel yourself welling up. It's the same thing. You're just being carried along with the story. There's nothing magical about it. I think I'm in touch with my emotions, and I can't help it.

I sort of thought acting was just about arranging your face into emotions. I didn't realise it was about actually allowing yourself to feel the feelings, then letting your face follow. That was a big learning curve.

I get very tired of books that feel emotionally empty. I would much rather have writers err on the side of being overly sentimental than not. I think that the perfect balance is a story that moves you without being maudlin, but I don't enjoy books that are empty of emotion and there's no connection to the characters.

If I see someone break down in tears, I don't necessarily feel empathy for them in those moments unless it's really warranted. I feel like a tear needs to be warranted in a movie; it needs to be earned.

Painting that does not radiate feeling is not worth looking at. The deepest-and rarest-of grown-up pleasures is true feeling.

I have always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep with their whole heart. Because those who do not know how to weep do not know how to laugh either.

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.

For you know that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.

I know that I've had a very fortunate life, but also I think my job as an actor is to connect emotionally to human beings.

With acting, there are a lot of subtleties and non-verbals involved. If someone is over there, getting eaten by a shark, there's a non-verbal way of how to act that. There's a certain nuance to acting that does not come intuitively to me. It's something I still have to learn.

Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

To be an actor or actress, you have to feel on a deep level and tap into emotions that you've never felt before. You're imagining how something would feel. You have to use your imagination so much.