Quotes & Sayings About Pantomime

You've got to admit it's a bit of a pantomime, though," said Crawly. "I mean, pointing out the Tree and saying 'Don't Touch' in big letters. Not very subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off? Makes you wonder what He's really planning. — Neil Gaiman

I'm actually quite a nice person. It's to do with the way I look, an uncompromising sort of face, brusque delivery and voice, and I think the combination of all that. When I'm doing pantomime, children will scream the place down before I open my mouth. There's obviously something that really gets them. — Kate O'Mara

There is nothing, no sound, and we are thinking very unhappy thoughts as we kneel down and perform our watery pantomime one more time. — Jeff Lindsay

Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. — John Keats

The most amusing thing about a pantomime horse is the necessity of having to shoot it twice. — Steve Aylett

Maturity
A stationary sense ... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful
Some say, desired.
And this must be the prime of life ... I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act,
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up, in fact,
My ablest time. — Philip Larkin

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte. — Alan Cumming

My mother never criticized any idea I had. She thought anybody could have anything. Even if I was in a poor family that worked at Ford Motor Company and lived in Dagenham. I could have told my mother that I wanted to work in pantomime. And she'd have said, "Great. I can help you." — Scott Raab

The circus collects the outsiders like a flame tempts moths. — Laura Lam

When I came into boxing, I brought it to the next level with adverts and doing pantomime and people just got jealous of me doing that. — Frank Bruno

In fact, one was so booked out we went from March and were to go till November, but the pantomime was booked so they transferred the show to the Prince of Wales Theatre because it was so packed out, and it ran on from there. — Norman Wisdom

PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action. — Ambrose Bierce

Was asking what the difference was between mime and pantomime and no one would say. — Garrison Keillor

I'd like to make people who see me in comic pantomime on the screen feel the way Mark Twain makes his readers feel. — Dorothy Gish

Ghosts ... they are the completions of the deads intended gestures, there unfinished plans still hanging in the air - something like when you forgot one thing and so you pantomime the motion. — Anne Tyler

We watched each other evolve into parents, with all the fear, rage and confusion evolution can involve. Our eight-year-old is the incarnation of our union; we are forever fused by her blood. My old take on romance seemed vaguely ludicrous, as affected as a pair of spats. I no longer saw the point in 'getting back to normal', that pantomime of pretending nothing had changed; I wanted to evolve from sexual posturing into a deeper consciousness, that of love. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

My first job was in pantomime; I was a chorus girl in 'Dick Whittington' at 16. I got the part by ringing the director daily to see if anyone had dropped out, and it paid off eventually, when I was cast as a rat! — Celia Imrie

If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friend's early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, 'Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead! — Anne Lamott

Baru raised her hand to smash the wineglass. Checked herself, checked even her trembling, and stood there in absurd pantomime, too firmly in control of her anger to move, too deeply angry for anything but stillness. — Seth Dickinson

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. — G.K. Chesterton

They say pantomime's a lost art. It's never been a lost art and never will be, because it's too natural to do. — Buster Keaton

To the three men in gray coats and golden buttons just cresting the hill, the pantomime was a strange one. The speck of green merged with the gray, and the black with the flash of red, as they shot off toward north. — Katherine Rundell

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. — Christian Nestell Bovee

I don't mind being cast as some kind of a pantomime baddie, but I am very fair in business. I always have been. I pride myself on being fair. — Simon Cowell

So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before. — Trevor Nunn

All of the universes are but phantoms, mirages, and while they have their own essence, their own pantomime - they pass forgotten. — Frederick Lenz

So the fact tht anyone would ever suggest that Arab women are dominated and demeaned is really quite ludicrous. In this part of the world, She's just Not That Into Him. We're the ones who make a pantomime of the wedding, and play at happily ever after ... The men might think they have the upper hand, they may believe they've nabbed themselves a prime piece of arm candy, but we've got his 'potential as a provider' wrapped around our little fingers. Oh yes, we're the smart ones. — Amy Mowafi

Who can ... guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good. — Iris Murdoch

Here's the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It's not that simple. We're all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain. Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions, and then again within those twenty-four hours. It's a daily pantomime, one man yielding control to the next: a backstage crowded with old hacks clamoring for their turn in the spotlight. Every week, every day. The angry man hands the baton over to the sulking man, and in turn to the sex addict, the introvert, the conversationalist. Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots. — Jonathan Nolan

We were raised right in the heart of the Bogside. Everything was so bad at the time that Mammy would bring us to the pantomime, circus, concerts because we were so confined at home. — Bronagh Gallagher

My teachers encouraged me to audition for some professional work during our summer vacation. I landed my first job. It was for the National Theatre Company's Mimika Pantomime troupe. I ended up touring with them for the next two years. — Didi Conn

I certainly enjoy doing pantomime-y things, but I didn't have any specific training in it. — Rob McClure

Words can be deceitful, but pantomime necessarily is simple, clear and direct — Marcel Marceau

I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passably well made. I will teach him how to move his arms and legs, to turn his head. I will give him steadiness, brilliancy and speed; but I cannot endow him with that fire and intelligence, those graces and that expression of feeling which is the soul of true pantomime. — Jean-Georges Noverre

Perhaps the cast of our political pantomime never was richer than at this day. We are particularly strong in clowns. At no former time, we should say, have we had such astonishing tumblers, or performers so ready to go through the whole of their feats for the amusement of an admiring throng. Their extreme readiness to exhibit, indeed, has given rise to some ill-natured reflections; it — Charles Dickens

The popular visual imagery of China, as The Times correspondent suggested, came from pantomime and music hall in pre-cinema days; together with comics, press and book illustrations. Reminiscences by visitors to China sometimes noted that this was how they actually saw Peking when first they arrived. Then they discovered that the pantomimes were really about England in fancy dress. — Christopher Frayling

Sound has spoiled the most ancient of the world's arts, the art of pantomime, and has canceled out the great beauty that is silence. — Charlie Chaplin

is just a word. You can't eat it or drink it and yet everywhere I go men talk of it endlessly, and they all tell a different tale of what it actually means. For the Alpirans it's all about duty, the Renfaelins think it's the same as courage. In these islands it appears it means killing a son for a crime committed by his father then slaughtering a helpless man when the pantomime fails to go to plan. — Anthony Ryan

And then he danced,-all foreigners excel the serious Angels in the eloquence of pantomime;-he danced, I say, right well, with emphasis, and a'so with good sense-a thing in footing indispensable: he danced without theatrical pretence, not like a ballet-master in the van of his drill'd nymphs, but like a gentleman. — Lord Byron

How do we get a pantomime cow on set. Jeez, the rigours of satire. — Mel Smith

Then he smiles and I smile. And then I blush and he lowers his eyes, and it's like this entire pantomime of nervous gestures. — Becky Albertalli

Although most informed balletomanes would place artistry above technique, artistry without a strong technique is a flaccid, bloodless thing indeed, whereas technique without much artistry can still dazzle us in the manner of the circus or sports arena translated to a higher plane. Though the perfect blend of the two elements is the consummation devoutly to be wished, the real enemy of good ballet is not the slight preponderance of one or the other but the prevalence of pantomime
the turning of dance into second-rate theater. — John Simon

It takes more drawing to tell a story in pantomime. — Jim Woodring

Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League ... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling. — Henry Winter

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us. — Dan Stevens

Remember that although they may speak a different language, they are still the same kind of people as the folks you know at home, have the same mental processes, are just as kindly and just as friendly. Remember that, quit talking and start over again - in pantomime. — Wally Byam

The grunt pulled his collar up around his neck. "Butterfinger." "Yeah." Queho nodded, a smile spreading across his face. "Butterfinger. Good one. I liked that one. I always got the candy stuck between my teeth. Same with the Heath Bar." He picked at his teeth with his finger. "Not worth the effort." The grunt kept pace with Queho. The caravan was traveling more like an amorphous pack. The town's wide streets accommodated the disorganization as the posse clopped along. Queho was so preoccupied with Dairy Queen, he didn't notice. "I always got the chocolate chip cookie dough," Queho said, licking his lips. "Oh, that was good. And remember? They'd hold it upside down?" He held out his hand to pantomime a Dairy Queen clerk holding a cup of ice cream upside down. "That way you knew how thick they made it." The — Tom Abrahams

I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre, and if that child has a great experience at a pantomime they will continue to come year after year. — John Barrowman

It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying. — Ted Hughes

Come here." I stop like a thief in a pantomime. And then dive into the warmth next to her. "Snuggling" - surely the most pleasant thing in the world. Scrunching further and further into the mattress as we struggle closer and closer warmer and warmer nearer and nearer, our bodies like a letter fitting into an envelope, my legs over her legs, our hips sliding against each other, her arm tighter and tighter around my shoulders, my face nestled more and more firmly into her collarbone. It is bliss. The simplest and most primitive bliss. A childlike, sexual, friendly, animal bliss. — Kate Millett

It's a pragmatist's business, comedy. Start off with good intentions and references to the Pompidou Centre and you end up with boiled sweets and a pantomime cow. — Mel Smith

And you may comfort yourself with the thought that you have been the caltrop under her satin shoe every step of the way. You misdirected the Romantic Facilitator she had hired, you turned up in her own house and reported her plans to her father and when she was on the brink of snatching the ransom you careered in from stage left dressed as a pantomime horse and threw everything into disorder. And then, just when she was probably working her way towards claiming a second ransom, you rescued her. — Frances Hardinge

And he could only follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes — Edith Wharton

Not nearly enough. Not recently, anyway." And she was sad about that.
"I know," he said, and kissed the back of her hand. "We'll fix it. Get some sleep."
"Night," she said, and watched him walk toward the door. "Hey. How'd you get in?"
He wiggled his fingers at her in a spooky oogie-boogie pantomime. "I'm a vampire. I have secret powers ," he said with a full-on fake Transylvanian accent, which he dropped to say, "Actually, your mom let me in."
"Seriously? My mom? Let you in my room? In the middle of the night?"
He shrugged. "Moms like me."
He gave her a full-on Hollywood grin, and slipped out the door. — Rachel Caine

Because I used to go and watch him rehearsing for pantomime, and I have adopted some of those priciples, like try to be on time, learn your script, how he approach it, etc. — Dennis Brown

In the immortal children's Christmas pantomime Peter Pan, there comes a climactic moment when the little angel Tinkerbell seems to be dying. The glowing light that represents her on the stage begins to dim, and there is only one possible way to save the dire situation. An actor steps up to the front of the house and asks all the children, "Do you believe in fairies?" If they keep confidently answering "YES!" then the tiny light will start to brighten again. Who can object to this ? One wants not to spoil children's belief in magic - there will be plenty of time later for disillusionment - and nobody is waiting at the exit asking them hoarsely to contribute their piggy banks to the Tinkerbell Salvation Church. — Christopher Hitchens

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue. — Guillermo Del Toro

Shade said as he stepped down the hall, "is another of the 'eternal boy's' major concerns, if you can believe it." The officer sat down and swung his feet to the desktop. "I probably could," he said, "but I think I'll pass." Blanchette leaned on Shade's arm, a pantomime of crumbling health, and swatted at his — Daniel Woodrell

Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy. — Bela Lugosi

I don't like to act because my life is a pantomime anyway. — Karl Lagerfeld

When a hypothesis enters a scientist's mind, he checks it by calculation and experiment, that is, by the mimicry and the pantomime of truth. It's plausibility infects others, and the hypothesis is accepted as the true explanation for the given phenomenon, until someone finds its faults. — Vladimir Nabokov

IT is some years now, since we first conceived a strong veneration for Clowns, and an intense anxiety to know what they did with themselves out of pantomime time, and of the stage. — Charles Dickens

Jason Mashak's SALTY AS A LIP is grounded in a voice patiently bridging the "steeples and 'scrapers" of an inquisitive mind. The poems are at once syllogistic, hard-edged, satirical, reflective, and finally as playful as love notes. The true joy of this book is that we are deliciously engaged in a "pantomime of pleasure" which the language and imagery generously evoke. — James Ragan

Slapstick was named after the battacio, or 'slap stick,' which made a dramatic popping sound when actors hit one another with it and which was used in the Commedia dell'arte, an Italian stage tradition whose blend of stereotype, sketch and shtick was passed down through circus and pantomime to vaudeville and burlesque and into cinema — David Parkinson

Yet there are moments when I feel a continent apart, when their belonging seems easy and unforced and my own is only pantomime. — Nayomi Munaweera

I heard my first laughter on stage, when I was about 10 years old. It was gold pantomime and I remember I was playing Baron Fitznoodle, who was the father of the ugly sisters in "Cinderella." And I walked on and got a great big laugh and I thought that was fantastic, until I looked down and found that my flies were open. And so I always check my flies. I even check my flies on radio. — Michael Caine

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate. — Julia Gillard

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness. — Patrick DeWitt

I'm a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator. — John Lasseter

I've been very fortunate. I've been in theater, films, television, radio, tragedy, comedy, farce - I've been in a musical and in music halls, in pantomime. I was once ringmaster in a circus. — Donald Sinden

If you're trying to learn how to act from a class, you're analyzing the teachers' movements and their intricacies, and it becomes like a pantomime of you wanting to be them, and that's wrong. Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin. It's your own imagination, and your own version of it. — Shia Labeouf

Conceive a canvas for a lyrical or fairytale buffoonery, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown everything in an abnormal and dreamy atmosphere, - in the atmosphere of the great days. - It must be something soothing, - even serene in its passion. - Regions of pure Poetry. — Charles Baudelaire

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man's own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this "nausea," as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd. — Albert Camus

We used to have front-row seats for the Grand Opera House pantomime every year, and once the dame May McFettridge got me up on-stage. — Rachel Tucker

A lot of actors won't do things because they say it is boring when you are always working. A lot of them won't go on tour, a lot won't do pantomime. I think you should do everything. — Victor Spinetti

As a child I was taken to the pantomime or the theatre and I would always, always fall in love with somebody on the stage. And want to have sex with them. — Ewan McGregor