Diane Paulus Quotes

My work is to reach people with ideas, hopes, dreams, encouragement, insight, and revelation. That's what an actor wants to do.

I've always been a history buff. It was one of the few subjects at school that really, really caught me. I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is.

Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.

I love acting because it's empowering. It empowers me.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we're in deep trouble.

I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.

We actors do this to pretend, to go into imaginary circumstances, so when the imaginary circumstance is of a different time, that just compounds the joy of doing what we do.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

The drama is a great revealer of life.

The power of pop culture stories should not be underestimated, and there is an enormous potential for inspirational stories that can have a positive, transformative effect on our lives.

I'm not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it's always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.

Lots of models have played mermaids throughout history and it is, kind of, a funny rite of passage.

I love 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing 'Finishing the Hat' or at least reading the lyrics to 'Finishing the Hat' and other songs from 'Sunday in the Park with George' to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist.

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

I'm drawn to making films that in some way move the social conversation.

It's probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.

I think theater is so undervalued. I have seen things there that have been far more vivid than things that actually have happened.

All I wanted to do was create theater for us, for our generation, for the people of this planet. And it's so rare that the art that you are making is reaching a huge mass of people.

An artist is made to entertain. That's their primary goal, to entertain you. But some artists record the moments of time. You wouldn't know what was happening in the '20s and '30s; you got to check the song or art.

I love the theater because it's alive. It's a beginning, a middle and an end, and it begins a life.