Quentin Tarantino Quotes

Actors, their greatest tool, their greatest resource is imagination. You can take things, power objects, you can recruit your dreams, you can access your memories and get there. So the idea is not to act but to just be.

I'm more of a writer than an actor, and I used to say that I'm mostly an improviser, though I haven't improvised in awhile.

When we don't have all the details about our characters, we have to make it up to fill in all the details. So, for me, writing and acting go hand in hand.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

I think stories get better the more people try to amuse themselves.

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.

One of the reasons I love acting is because I'm so interested in other people's lives, and I often incorporate things I hear or observe into my work. I've become a bit of a 'person addict,' and so I like brushing up against lots of different characters.

My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.

I've been interested in the writing/directing thing and really fell into acting by complete accident.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

For me, that is the craft of acting: literally creating something from nothing.

There have been days where I've had two writers' rooms or three writers' rooms going, and you walk back and forth. And then you sort of throw yourself on the sofa, and you go, 'Just talk at me for, like, 20 minutes,' and my brain will catch up with this particular story. But I find that exciting.

Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, 'Ohhh, it's magic.' Nothing's magic. A thing doesn't jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren't good.

I really wanted to create some of my own characters, then it became wanting to act the parts, then it sort of grew from there because I really enjoyed doing it.

Acting is probably what I'm best at, but there are certain stories kind of rattling around in my head that I like the idea of developing over time.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.

This is writing. You cut out chunks of your own memories, rework them, bleed into them, breathe into the raw clay, and hope the creature lives.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.