Brantley Quotes & Sayings

Tattoos. Anyone who doesn't like my art can kick rocks. — T.M. Frazier

Christian Fiction is like a parable. The story is made up, but the truth is brought to life. Enjoy the story, but savor the truth. — Mary Ann Brantley

Yeah and she's my kinda crazy
The little games she plays
Lord they'll never get old
She's too cute to get on my last nerve
The way she throws her little fits
Pokin' out her lip and bitin' mine when we kiss
There ain't a fight that she can't win
That's my baby
And she's my kinda crazy — Brantley Gilbert

hand. Mex turned and walked toward his study, leaving the door open. Vicente Vega followed. If Vega looked around at his home, Mex didn't know. He didn't care. — Peg Brantley

I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others. — Ben Brantley

Be prepared to have the breath knocked out of you. — Ben Brantley

When people ask me why are you singing a drinking song if you don't drink anymore, because when I did drink I drank enough to sing drinking songs for the rest of my life! — Brantley Gilbert

No, I'm not happy. I'm far from fucking happy. I've been far from fucking happy since I got out of prison. If I think back, I wasn't exactly happy before prison either, and it's your fucking fault!"
"How the fuck is that my fault?" Now, he'd gone too far, blaming me for his life years before I was even in it.
"Because you are the one who made me realize I was fucking unhappy. Because with you, I think I can actually BE happy! — T.M. Frazier

Whether you like it or not, a performance's triumphs and belly flops come to seem excruciatingly intimate, as if you were somehow partly responsible for them. — Ben Brantley

I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly. — Ben Brantley

Rage properly channeled can definitely give birth to good even great theater. Disgust, a more passive and distancing emotion, is far less likely to. Would you rush to a play called Look Back in Queasiness? — Ben Brantley

Country music has its way of getting into the minds and hearts of people. I will say - you never know how long it's gonna take something to grow, you never know if you're gonna hit in a certain market. — Brantley Gilbert

The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: 'Tobacco Road', 'Abie's Irish Rose' and our old friend 'Spider-Man', which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong. — Ben Brantley

The cliche was always that 'everybody's a critic,' but it becomes truer every day. Long before reviews appear in the traditional outlets, you can now usually discover - somewhere in the thickets of the Internet - reactions to shows from people who've seen them in previews. — Ben Brantley

If you agree with a critic, you admire him or her. If you disagree, you despise them. We all feel a great need to be confirmed in our opinions. — Ben Brantley

I can honestly say that everything I've ever listened to has influenced me or motivated me in one way, form or fashion. — Brantley Gilbert

It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement. — Ben Brantley

We weren't raised to take, we were raised to give the shirt off our back to anyone in need. — Brantley Gilbert

My life is like a Harley Ride. When I'm on my bike that's really one of the places I feel completely at home. — Brantley Gilbert

What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire. — Ben Brantley

THE HOT (AND SERIOUSLY COOL) ENERGY that comes from the musical gospel preached by the title character of FELA! feels as if it could stretch easily to the borders of Manhattan and then across a river or two. There should be dancing in the streets! — Ben Brantley

I've seen plays that are, objectively, total messes that move me in ways that their tidier brethren do not. That's the romantic mystery of great theater. Translating this ineffability into printable prose is a challenge that can never be fully met. — Ben Brantley

You're awake." I hold my breath when I hear Brantley's scratchy just-waking-up voice. How is it that even that's sexy? My morning voice sounds like an eighty year old woman who's smoked a pack a day since she was two. — Ra'chael Ohara

EVERY SINGLE DANCER, SINGER and BAND MEMBER is a BRILLIANT SOLO ARTIST — Ben Brantley

I think it's just a conglomerate of everybody's influences that comes out on the record, and live as well. — Brantley Gilbert

Theater criticism should be visceral, at least on some level, an articulation of that fierceness and passion. I usually do a fair amount of research before I see a show - on the history of previous productions (if it's a revival) and the creative team. — Ben Brantley

The eternal ambiguity of human motives and memory. — Ben Brantley

I have received hostile voice mail messages and e-mails. They are often anonymous, I'm sad to say, as anonymous messages are delivered only by very low forms of human life, in my opinion. — Ben Brantley

Daily habits can anchor your thoughts and feelings just as readily as any spiritual practice or yoga class. — Jeffrey Brantley

Cyndi Lauper knows how to work a crowd. — Ben Brantley

If you can't live it down, might as well live it up. — Brantley Gilbert