Suzan-Lori Parks Quotes

I don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out, 'Gosh, I wonder how guys feel,' because most every piece of art I look at invites me into that experience.

Well-written plays deserve to be learned from and understood properly, both by actors and audiences alike, and Rattigan's very human characters help us do that.

I think that some of these plays are lost in this new horror called development, which is a place for dramaturgs to say "let me tell you what your play means," and the life gets sucked out of a play.

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.

Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.

It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.

I imagine as an axiom you could say that the better the play, the less "creativity" the director need exert.

I had no idea whether I could play 'em or not, but I wanted to and I was very determined... but the band director said #That's not really normal.' Of course, all you have to tell me is that something's not normal and I'll go for it!!

There's a reason why actors are always dying to work with the Coens. They just set the stage for you to do their best work.

Our phones do play to our natural nervousness about being vulnerable to each other, but that doesn't mean that we can't we can't pull ourselves together, and say - we need to talk to each because it's in conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.

Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.

Some directors are very free and some directors are very specific. It seemed like doing a play.

If I find the right character, I don't care if it's a film, a television show or a play, I'm gonna do it. Everybody crosses over and it's just one big pool of stuff now.

A film director is not a creator, but a midwife. His business is to deliver the actor of a child that he did not know he had inside him.

You definitely put a bit of yourself in every character, and you always have to have an understanding and empathy for the person that you play.

When you understand the fear then you can begin to move past it. So when I hear the people say it's innate, you can't learn it, I just want to hit them in the head.

I take compliments and I take constructive criticism. Not everyone loves you. It's the way you react as a footballer. I use it all to make me play better.

Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

I perceive the world through the wide range of emotions that whirl all around in it.

Different things work for different people. One thing I've realized, though, is that the work that I've done on myself outside of my work as an actress has really allowed me to open up my mind. I think I understand my emotional state and my complexities now in a much clearer way, and I can put them to rest in a way that there's almost a catharsis that happens through the work, where I can do it and then find myself again.

A certain type of man, when he loves for the first time, his love is not really love, it is possession. Possessions don't have rights or feelings; they are something to owned and controlled. He had spent more than a year trying to do just that, and failing.

Being able to work with Ridley Scott on this film is like being able to play on the Olympic team for actors.

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.