Lahr Quotes & Sayings

There is something particularly special and personal about the circle and how its curves comfortably rule every aspect of our lives. — Kat Lahr

Momentum was part of the exhilaration and the exhaustion of the twentieth century which Coward decoded for the British but borrowed wholesale from the Americans. — John Lahr

In 1957, 'West Side Story' had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; 'Bye Bye Birdie,' set in Sweet Apple, Ohio, where the citizens apparently dress mostly in chartreuse, mauve, orange, periwinkle, and turquoise, was a walk on the bright side. — John Lahr

t can be easily argued that all living things are conscious in some aspect, but many would agree that advanced consciousness like our own is unique. — Kat Lahr

I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't always happen. — John Lahr

Nobody has ever gone broke selling escape to the American public. — John Lahr

Criticism is a life without risk. — John Lahr

Although the 'New York Times' annually declares that Broadway is on its deathbed, news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of life yet in the old tart. — John Lahr

We live in a time of terror, and contrary to what we see on television and allow ourselves to believe, the real goal of terror is not to kill people but to kill thought; to so demoralize a society that it implodes from within. — John Lahr

When it comes to society and human consciousness, Darwinism still exists in its primal message. — Kat Lahr

We must not fall asleep in the present because the now moment is the only reality we truly have. — Kat Lahr

'Angels in America' - which is composed of two three-hour plays, 'Millennium Approaches' and 'Perestroika' - proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams's 'The Glass Menagerie.' — John Lahr

Sometimes we get stuck in patterns or reoccurring themes in our lives that require a shocking epiphany to give us the opportunity to see new possibilities and notice the obstacles that keep us from moving on. — Kat Lahr

Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble. — John Lahr

We are always people that are in the making, constantly adapting to accommodate the roads we walk. As we learn, it changes us. As we go about our course, we grow, and prune everything around us; friends, beliefs, desires. Our past experiences plant the seeds needed for our future roads, with all its turns, speed, and treachery. — Kat Lahr

Broadway shows in New York draw two times the attendance of all New York sports teams put together. — John Lahr

I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk; the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself. — John Lahr

When Elvis made his mass-media debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - his notorious gyrations filmed only from the waist up - I fell off the family chaise longue with delight. — John Lahr

His life was one long extravaganza, like living inside a Faberge egg. — John Lahr

Tony Awards boost Broadway attendance and sell the shows on the road. They're the sugar to swat the fly. If you needed more explanation for the yearly ballyhoo, in the metropolitan areas where a Broadway show plays, the local economy is boosted by three and a half times the gross ticket sales. So when we're talking Tonys, we're talking moolah. — John Lahr

Humans have wandered the Earth for thousands of years but never has our capacity to alter the Earth's ecosystem at a larger scale been more prominent than it is today. — Kat Lahr

It is logical to say that ignorance seems to be the root cause of all human suffering. — Kat Lahr

It is within the boundaries of reflection we are able to become aware of insights that can lead us to understanding. — Kat Lahr

We were postwar middle-class white kids living in the slipstream of the greatest per-capita rise in income in the history of Western civilization; we were 'teen-agers' - a term, coined in 1941, that was in common usage a decade later - a new, recognizable franchise. We had money, mobility, and problems all our own. — John Lahr

I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life. — John Lahr

Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world. — John Lahr

Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out before us like a banquet; everything was for the taking, especially hearts. — John Lahr

In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding. — John Lahr

After The Wizard Of Oz I was typecast as a lion, and there aren't all that many parts for lions. — Bert Lahr

A cruel critic has never made anything; his glibness is a way of inflicting his emptiness on others. — John Lahr

Of the modern critics, although I disagree with almost everything she says, I admire Mary McCarthy's eloquence and social observation in 'Sights and Spectacles'; she thinks in print, but she doesn't have a real feel for the stage. — John Lahr

We are living a life full of first experiences, from a first kiss, to the first time giving blood, to conceptual and philosophical explanations of humanity's firsts. — Kat Lahr

Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one. — John Lahr

'Death of a Salesman' is a brilliant taxonomy of the spiritual atrophy of mid-twentieth-century white America. — John Lahr

The case for interconnectedness between conscious human lives is hard to deny. — Kat Lahr

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising. — John Lahr

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it. — John Lahr

Life here on Earth is promised suffering and one needs to find ways to live through it. Many people turn to meditation and prayer - anything that can connect us deeper into ourselves and with the divine. — Kat Lahr

We are all tied to the burdens of this existence, and it seems as if everyday renewal is occurring in our lives and those around us. — Kat Lahr

Like the tail fins on fifties American cars or the parabolic shapes of Populuxe furniture, 'West Side Story' incarnates the dream of momentum in the golden age of the twentieth century. — John Lahr

Precedence exists in humanity as it does with law. — Kat Lahr

The British playwright Nina Raine is one of her generation's most promising talents. — John Lahr

Theatre people, who are an adaptive species, know that to remain sane in the process of production where everyone and his uncle has an opinion about how to fix a show, you must pick the people whose knowledge and taste you trust and stick only to these few. The Tweetocracy is no place to look. — John Lahr

Brendan suddenly 'came out' to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone 'come out' to you is the 'pretending to be surprised' part. You want him to feel like what he's telling you is Big. It's like, if somebody tells you they're pregnant, you don't say, 'I did notice you've been eating like a hog lately.' Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don't want him to realize that everybody's known this since he was ten and he wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion, but Bert Lahr. 'Oh, my gosh, no waaaay?' You stall, trying to think of something more substantial to say. 'Is everyone, like, freaking out? What a ... wow. — Tina Fey

Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt. — John Lahr

I don't know about you, but I believe that in our present time we are definitely shaking things up with human fate in this world. — Kat Lahr

'The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak. — John Lahr

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence. — John Lahr

There seems to be a sense of balance or equilibrium that nature attempts to achieve with the usage of cycles, leading us to the concept of self-organization and spontaneous order. — Kat Lahr

Society needs to evolve just as our DNA does. — Kat Lahr

That was my one big Hollywood hit, but, in a way, it hurt my picture career. After that, I was typecast as a lion, and there just weren't many parts for lions. — Bert Lahr

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it. — John Lahr

Parts of our genome simply cannot survive a situation where the environment suffers from the full overload of toxins we currently live in. — Kat Lahr

Our future paths are defined by how we turned and walked the road in the past. — Kat Lahr

I detest literature. I abominate the theatre. I have a horror of culture. I am only interested in magic! — John Lahr

Equality has a hard time in humanity. Race, sexuality, or creed has always divided societies. — Kat Lahr

Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot,' billed as 'the laugh sensation of two continents,' made its American debut at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, in Miami, Florida, in 1956. My father, Bert Lahr, was playing Estragon, one of the two bowler-hatted tramps who pass the time in a lunar landscape as they wait in vain for the arrival of a Mr. Godot. — John Lahr

If we take a moment to reflect on human history we see so much complexity that it's difficult to comprehend it all. Yet, simple truths are obvious; everyone influences each other either directly or indirectly, we all share this planet regardless of national boundaries, we all require the same nutritional needs with the most important being water, we can easily wage war and kill and at the same time love and have passion for another. — Kat Lahr