Russell Hoban Quotes

Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite Chinese restaurant - you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage.

Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

What's exciting is there's a curtain that divides the audience from this other world. You want to see behind.

Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

I always told Hitch that it would have been better to put seats around the set and sell tickets.

I was prepared for the theatre, but not for the nuts and bolts.

There's theater in life, obviously, and there's life in theater.

It is fun to try figure out the things that really are real and the things that aren't.

It's always a thrill to walk through a Broadway stage door.

When you're a kid, you read about this glamorous acting world, but actually it's really unglamorous.

I'm an actor. I hate to blow everyone's illusions.

Everyone thinks footballers have a great life and drive great cars, but sometimes you have to pull the veil away and look behind.

I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?

Scrape the grey sky clean. Realize every grey cloud is a smoke screen to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not the sun and moon are still there, and always there is light.

Now it's clear to me/ that everything you see/ ain't always what it seems.

Which country is real, mine or the teacher's? My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered.

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.

I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true .

Please remember: things are not what they seem.

...it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.