Steve Coogan Quotes

I love to entertain, I love to make people laugh, cry, and move them, perhaps moving them in their lives.

I think the serious roles impact people the most.

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

I can only do it if there's humour, wit, comedy and drama. If you can get audiences laughing and then suddenly turn them to tears... it's a weird way of making a living making people cry, but I think it's very exciting to be able to send audiences on a rollercoaster ride.

Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.

Most of the time, my favorite drama has comedy in it as well. I think most good dramas have comedy in there. And all of the dramatic actors I look up to are also very funny.

I love theater. I think theater, when its done right, is the best, like a religious experience. When it is done badly, it's the worst thing. It's just an incredible experience.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: 'Comfort me.' 'Amuse me.' 'Touch my sympathies.' 'Make me sad.' 'Make me dream.' 'Make me laugh.' 'Make me shiver.' 'Make me weep.' 'Make me think.'

I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?

I can't think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does

There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.

Levity, you need levity to feel anything. You need to laugh before you cry. I think films that take themselves too seriously without any levity are missing an important ingredient to the potential emotional impact of their stories.

I think all the roles I've played really center around either the great conflict or how the great conflict affects the people that I love. I've been cast often as a hard-nosed, hyper-confident guy.

Rock is gut level and it just gets to people. I think there's far too much emphasis on intellectualization, especially in rock 'n' roll which is a primitive form.

Many people say to me, "I saw [Miral] and it really stayed with me. I woke up the next day and really thought about it, and have been thinking about it for awhile." That was my goal.

You want people to think. You want people to be emotionally moved. And there's a theory behind that in terms of storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that's where something like live theater or a live performance is something that is very valuable because you get instant feedback from your audience and you kind of know the things that work and the things that don't work.

A good filmmaker is someone who can look at a piece and go, "This camera's really going to be a character. I want people to feel like they're being punched."

One of the great things about drama is that it makes you feel like you're not a crackpot, and that there are other people who think and feel the way you do.

Sometimes people confuse contrivance and authenticity, and sometimes I think authenticity can get in the way of a good excuse to do something theatrical. I just don't like wasting opportunity - if you're going to do a photo session, if you're going to walk on stage, why not make it interesting?

It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

I think that music is still a mystery to most people. It kind of goes through most people without a specific thought. They feel the music, which is what's supposed to happen. They're not supposed to be curious about who wrote the music; they're supposed to feel what the show is trying to get them to feel. So if I help get that feeling across, that's good enough for me.

My ultimare goal is, without illusion and without sentimentality, merely by telling the truth as I see it, to break your heart. If I can break your heart and cause your awareness to expand to include another person's experience, even a fictional person's experience, and to inhabit for a moment their sorrow and suffering, then I think it expands us as people.

When did "sentimental" become a pejorative barb? I do not at all share the notion that a piece of music, or a poem, or a film that bypasses the brain and aims straight for the heart . . . should automatically be heaped with scorn. I think it is symptomatic of a sad and dangerous impoverishment of spirit.

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.