Bob Balaban Quotes

I really like doing puppetry; I'm not sure if it will find its way into 'Big Bang,' but it always does seem to find its way into a lot of things.

Acting is an art form. If you are not creating something that's unusual and informative and at least has the possibility of being illuminating, then you are not into it as an art form.

When I was in fourth grade... this wonderful teacher said you didn't have to write a book report, you could just talk about the book, you could do a drawing of the book, you could write a play inspired by the book, and that's what I did. I got to be so famous. I had to go around to every school and perform it. It was just so natural and fun.

In preschool, I would plan out my show-and-tell every week to be funny and exciting. Then in first grade I wrote a play, and my classmates and I performed it as a puppet show.

I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic.

When I was a little, little kid, my family got a new washing machine, and they had a big box that was left over. So I cut a big hole in the box, and I made it like a giant TV set. I brought it into the living room, and I did the news and the weather for my family.

The stage is like a laboratory where you can run theatrical experiments, imposing interesting conditions on the cast or story and seeing how they pan out. Each new play is like creating a tiny virtual universe enclosed by the confines of the stage.

I make napkins talk in restaurants, socks talk on car journeys. There is an awful lot of puppetry going on in the house.

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.

When I was a kid of six or seven, I used to get up on the stove woodpile for a stage and I'd put on the wildest show.

Hollywood's like a warehouse. It's just a place that you go. What's interesting in the warehouse has to do with the creative people.

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

Hope is a key ingredient in what drives creativity - the hope of bringing to life what exists in the imagination, of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary - so it's completely logical that Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world. It's full of people bursting with the desire to make the world laugh, cry, think.

My parents would say, 'Why don't you go out and play?' and I would say, 'I can't! I'm putting on my shows!'

In 'Space Dandy,' I'm trying to challenge myself and do stuff I haven't done before. I'm aiming for a really funny, cool, and crazy creation.

I dabbled in puppetry throughout college and even had my own traveling puppet show after I graduated.

I used to do puppet shows as a kid - me and my brother would do them - and then any poor soul who came into the house had to sit and watch our puppet shows.

From a very young age, my main thing was always entertaining.

I'm very creative, intuitive - I like to entertain.

When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.

My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.

As with anything, you need to keep your creative juices flowing and keep the character interesting.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

What's cool is when you're able to give your audience imagination and you don't have to cage them in like animals.