Amy Poehler Quotes

If you're a good improviser, you improvise well enough that people think that you're doing a sketch.

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

I'm a theater guy at heart; I love the theater. I was lucky enough to spend a good decade and a half in the New York theater community.

I think every actor should go back and do theater periodically.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.

I would totally, if Alan Cumming is tired of doing Cabaret, I'd be like, 'I'll do it tonight.' I would have such a good time doing that.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is.

Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.

Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.

I'll always go back to the stage.

I've always been into theater and movies. When I was in school, I did a monologue for my talent show. I would go to the local theater. I was always in dance. I was always performing. That was always my thing.

I wanted to be a theater actress, and initially, I wanted to work in musical theater

Working with talented people and challenging myself as an actor [excites me].

Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.

Theater makes working in movies or TV seem like a cake-walk.

I like to work as an actor. Not just for money, but because I really enjoy acting.

The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.

I've always enjoyed performing. I was in figure skating before, and then I joined my first school play. Ever since that, you have not been able to get me out of the theater.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

I love TV now, and 'Modern Family,' but what draws me back to theater is that initial instinct of wanting to be a theater actor. I love the challenge of starting a play and not stopping until you finish. I love the immediacy of trusting your instincts.

Yes, yes, theater in general is just going to always be my first love, performing for a live audience.

I got into theater at an early age.