Dramatic Truth Quotes

As an actor, what I can do is tell the truth. At least, I hope I can tell the truth - a dramatic truth, but still an honest portrayal.

In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them.

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.

I think it's true of every great comedy that it's rooted in some dramatic, incredibly personal truth. And it's true of all great drama that there has to be comedy.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.

To be true to a play, you can't add something that takes away from the author's intent.

The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.

I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

For some reason, comedy just comes easily to me, and I feel like I can do it. I don't have any doubt. When I work on drama, there's always a sense of 'Did I find this person's truth at the bottom of this?' And it's hard to tell sometimes.