Barbara Cook Quotes

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

You look at somebody's work as an actor and you can see their emotional life being fed into it and you can kind of feel them through it.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

An actor's job is to find variations of the same emotion in his being so that every time he expresses grief or joy, it doesn't look the same.

People think I am unemotional because my voice is flat and a bit boring. It is unfortunate but it is just the way it is. I've tried to change it but it doesn't seem to make a difference. The truth is, I have lots of emotions inside. I cried after the semi-final at Wimbledon [2012] because I was proud to reach the final and I knew how much it meant to the country. I cried after the [losing] final [to Federer], too, for different reasons. I felt I had let people down. I think people warmed to that. They could see how much it hurt.

I think the emotional toolbox I have is healthy for an actor, as far as the intensity of emotions go. It's other things I have to hone. I can swim in that comfortably.

I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?

You have to find actors who have the ability to display a wide range of emotion effectively. That's so much harder than it seems.

My way is the sensitive, emotional way, because that's who I am. A day doesn't go by where I don't sit and cry, listening to the stories. I try to be the clown and court jester and make people laugh.

People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.

The fact in acting, you can tap into your darkest moments in life to your lightest moments. And people will watch it, and appreciate it, and even engage with you because of that. That's the greatest job one Earth.

Most people here don't have a wide emotional range. It's just the type of people astronauts are, they're required to be level.

As actors, emotion is the sand in the sandbox for us. Without emotion, there's nothing to play - and we are playing. We know that. Whether you think we do or not, we know that.

I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.

I think it's always the emotional situations that are more tricky to nail and get into because I don't want to pretend.

There's definitely some pieces in there that reflect on my personal life, but really, they aren't as personal as everybody thinks they are. I would like them to be more personal. The emotions, the songs themselves are personal. I can't do it - I've tried to write personally and it just doesn't seem to work. It would be too obvious. Some things that you could read in could fit into anyone's life that had any amount of pain at all. It's pretty cliche'.

Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

I think that both musicals and opera have a capacity to get to an inner emotional landscape.

That's your job as the actor, to understand the human part of the character, to make it real.

Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face?

I think I'm an overly emotional person. I feel a lot, but I don't believe that's unique to me or that's how I am able to do the things I do.

You need emotional content.