Charles Lamb Quotes

During the war, my mother used to take me to the local repertory theatre on a Monday night, and we used to get two seats for the price of one, for nine pence, in the gods.

Christopher Walken was probably the most experienced dancing partner I've had in movies, because he has the same background as I do. He's from theatre, Broadway and off-Broadway, and we both shared that.

To me, the theatre - I don't like to say it, but I'll say it - is a temple in a kind of way, where human beings go to be elevated.

Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world

If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.

The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.

As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.

Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.

It doesn't bother me. Sure, everybody wants approval, but I came from the theatre and I've always treasured a remark from there which goes: 'For every six people who love you, there will be half a dozen who loathe you.' The quality of an author's work is not usually determined until after his death. Even Dickens got some pretty bad reviews.

You had actors that came from live theatre and it felt like you're doing a play. Every time we did a three or four minute walk-and-talk in the West Wing, the exhilaration of going on stage would be a part of it.

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.

When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape.

In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug.

It's much better to talk about the media as a system of propaganda and abuse, of manufactured consent, than it is to claim it's some kind of democratizing force that is not responsible for what it does. The notion that the media simply reflects reality is an argument that justifies its flight from responsibility.

It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night.

I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal ... its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities.

Working at the National Theatre is just wonderful. There is no place like the South Bank on a summer's afternoon.

I like going into a school matinee. I like to be behind the stage because there's a spy-hole and what you see is the best moment in all theatre.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

Knowledge, like experience, is valid in fiction only after it has dissolved and filtered down through the imagination into reality.

What separated me from all my homeboys is the fact that I didn't get caught inside the reality. I was always dreaming about doing something else or going somewhere else.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

It is a task of art to express clear vision of reality.