Brian Stokes Mitchell Quotes

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

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

The ability to make somebody feel something: that's art. However you look at it, whether you're an author, a painter, a singer, a rapper, a spoken-word artist - art.

I want to move people, stir something within them that makes them feel. That's what a movie should do and an actor should do, make you feel something. I think that's why people love films so much.

There's always something more to be accomplished with a character. Theater is a human experience. There's nothing shellacked or finished off about it. I guess that's why it always draws me back.

When theatre works, it's like nothing else, and when it doesn't, which is often, it's excruciating. It's perhaps not so excruciating when a novel goes wrong, but there is a kind of magic that can and should happen.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.

I have come to the conclusion there is no point making anything if you're not going to make people laugh and cry.

My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.

I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

Actors, we like stories, we like storytelling, we love being a part of the story, and if you give us a story that's interesting then we'll want to do it.

I believe, even when I'm doing my standup or my acting or whatever I'm doing, I believe in painting pictures.

Art imitates life. It's definitely helpful to feel that way. You feel that way when you're leading a show and you're on a set.

The beautiful thing about stand-up is you can create and immediately deliver, perform, and get paid for what you do.

I think the same way about theatre, you go out there and you are creating a world for a moment that can actually have a real impact on people, present some kind of story that gives you something to think about when you walk away, feeling enriched - if it works out well.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

I like to disappear in the parts I play.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

Characters don't belong to anyone, not even the person who plays them.

I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.

I would love to do more movies. I'd like to get into some theater, too, if I could, just to learn more. I want to do gritty performances that I'm proud of. It doesn't matter to me if four people see it or millions of people see it, as long as I perform in such a way that people go, 'Wow!'