Real Theater Quotes & Sayings

Theater is a space where you cross over from everyday life, because there are real people in that moment moving in front of you - you're being invited to believe in a story and cross that bridge. — Cate Blanchett

The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe. — P.S. Baber

I didn't really know much about the Houdinis when I started. As soon as they sent me the script, I wanted to find out everything I could about Bess. Luckily, I have a really wonderful friend named Michael Mitnick, who's a writer. He was a magician as a child, and that led him to the theater, which led to drama school, and he writes films now. Magic was really his thing, growing up, so he put me in touch with his magic teacher who is a real Houdini expert. — Kristen Connolly

Reading a book about something can be an obstacle to doing it because it gives you the impression that you are doing what you are only thinking about doing. It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of our imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you. It is like a book on a shelf. But, as Dostoyevsky says, 'love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams' (The Brothers Karamazov). — Peter Kreeft

I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual. — Michael Shannon

The Majestic Theater in 1990. That was one of my first real shows where I had 300 to 400 people there. — Kid Rock

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place ... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you. — Rich Sommer

Real life, the real world, is a vast theater of salvation, directed by our wise and totally involved God. — Eugene H. Peterson

All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that. — Lauren Bacall

The theater has fallen into the hands of real estate men and syndicates and those who have no love or interest in the stage or its life, but who have considered it principally as a means to make money. — Eva Le Gallienne

What's wrong with actors?"
"They quote poetry. A girl has to be crazy to believe one," I told him. "It's far too easy for an actor to give you a good line."
"You're quick to judge."
"No," I argued. "I've had experience with theater types. After a while they can't tell real from unreal. They believe their own creation of themselves and can't understand why everyone else isn't convinced they're wonderful."
He jumped down from the limb, then stared up at me, his eyes sparking with anger. "It's efficient, I guess, judging an individual by a group. You don't waste any time trying to know somebody."
But I don't want to know you! I thought as I watched Mike walk away. I can't risk knowing you. — Elizabeth Chandler

The big advantage to playing the Venetian in Las Vegas - where it's a beautiful theater - is that unlike other places, even many other nice venues, I can do a set and lighting cues, I can put on a real show. I can dress up, wear a tux. — Tim Allen

I've always had not just an affection but a real love for the theater family in New York, and I really feel it is a family. I'm so touched by the generosity of everyone there. — Lindsay Duncan

In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness. — Tom Stoppard

That's one of my real goals is to keep theater in my life. — Finn Wittrock

I grew up in Pennsylvania in a small town. Real small, like one high school and one movie theater. Well, there was a state college there, that was the only good thing about it. — Keith Haring

When I was a little girl, the only real form of entertainment I was exposed to was theater, being raised in St. Louis, and I still love theater, and I think sitcoms are similar to that, in there's a live audience, and you know, I definitely like the comedy of it, too. I like to make people laugh, and I definitely think laughter is healing. — Kelly Stables

In this world, this life, "flow" [the times when our work or play so absorbs and attunes our energies that we lose track of time] comes to an end. The canvas is dry, the fugue is complete, the band plays the tag one more time and then resolves on the final chord. And, too, the book is finished, the service is over, the lights go up in the darkened theater and we emerge blinking into the bright lights of the "real world." But what if the timeless, creative world we had glimpsed is really the real world -- and it is precisely its reality that gave it such power to captivate us for a while? What if our ultimate destiny is that moment of enjoyment and engagement we glimpse in the artist's studio? — Andy Crouch

More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat. — Bill Hybels

The Maximilian of her memory ceased to exist next to the real man. The former was a simple penny-lute tune. In the flesh, Max was the King's Theater orchestra playing Haydn. — Wendy LaCapra

[ ... ] a given text may seem fictional or actual depending on the context in which we encounter it. The same is true for oral performances. [Thomas] Pavel takes the example of a theatrical scene wherein an actor mimics the gestures of a priest and pretends to bless the audience. There is nothing effective about this blessing in most contexts, but it can become effective in certain circumstances: imagine, for example, a dictatorship in which religion is banned and in which a theater audience, having kept the old faith, experiences the actor's gesture as authentic, transforming this fictional scene in a scene of real life. — Pierre Bayard

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree. — Eddie Redmayne

I've heard 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I've seen de real thing, and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no theater. — Harriet Tubman

Have you ever watched people when they don't know you're watching them? Like in a movie theater or a concert. When people get caught up in watching something, their faces change. The lines on their faces get softer, because whatever they're watching has made them forget how they think they're supposed to be looking. Instead, they just ARE - just sitting there, listening and watching and being real. — Claire Legrand

When I was a teenager, I continued to visit imaginary places by spending all my free time at our local community theater. Whether I acted in a play or worked backstage, the world of Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare always seemed more real to me than the dreary life of high school. — Mary Pope Osborne

When your dawn theater sounds to clear your sinuses: don't delay. Jump. Those voices may be gone before you hit the shower to align your wits. Speed is everything. The 90-mph dash to your machine is a sure cure for life rampant and death most real. Make haste to live. Oh, God, yes. Live. And write. With great haste. — Ray Bradbury

I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I'm always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses, how dialogue sounds, what feels authentic and sounds real, what's funny, how to build distinctive and original characters - all the aspects of playwriting, scene-building, the architecture of dramatizing. — Adriana Trigiani

Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him. — Daphne Zuniga

I was pursuing the arts with theater in school, and I was doing after-school activities, but not in any real movement towards a professional career. — Uzo Aduba

To make theater out of real life, you need to catch dialogue when it happens. — D. A. Pennebaker

TCA pretends to be about raising money for charity. That's true, but only so far. If I had not taken time off from the Penn & Teller show to do The Celebrity Apprentice - if Teller and I had just done our show, gotten usual pay - I could have donated four times the amount of money that Trump had pledged to give my charity if I won the whole damn shooting match. Opportunity Village, "my" charity that helps intellectually disabled adults to enter society, got a lot of attention because I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, and that does count for something. And when I was "fired," my real bosses at Caesars, who own the Rio and the Penn & Teller Theater, said, "Oh, you wanted a quarter million for Opportunity Village? We don't have to do some jive TV show; we'll just write a check." They wrote the full winning amount to Opportunity Village and everyone was happy. — Penn Jillette

When I was in college, I was in the theater department, which for anyone who has been involved in any kind of theater program, you know that it's really wacky and tight-knit, a real family. Me and my good friends from college would do random shows and plays that were sometimes serious, but most of the time really goofy and funny. — Darren Criss

In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night. — Orson Welles

Going to the theater or having the honor of performing in theater reminds you of your humanity in a very different way. It's a real release and an incredible challenge. But the stage is a dangerous place. You gotta be trained. Plus, crowds like when things go wrong. I think that's part of the thrill. Anything can happen. — Nina Arianda

I think that there is a real beauty to the live aspect of the theater, and the working with a director for a month on a script in the isolation of a room and really deeply delving into who are these people, what is the story we're telling, how do we want to tell it? — Karen Allen

My first real acting gig was probably playing Mamillius in my mother's 'Winter's Tale.' My mom and dad are both in theater, so I grew up acting and being a little theater brat as well. — Logan Marshall-Green

The students tend to stick close to campus. There is nothing for them to do in Blacksmith proper, no natural haunt or attraction. They have their own food, movies, music, theater, sports, conversation and sex. This is a town of dry cleaning shops and opticians. Photos of looming Victorian homes decorate the windows of real estate firms. These pictures have not changed in years. The homes are sold or gone or stand in other towns in other states. This is a town of tag sales and yard sales, the failed possessions arrayed in driveways and tended by kids. — Don DeLillo

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public. — Clarence Darrow

I went to Northwestern in Chicago, in Evanston, and then I ended up trickling down in Chicago theater. I did a bunch of plays, but I was non-equity. For a lot of people, non-equity means you're not yet professional. But for me, if you're in a mainstream theater, you're doing something real. — Denis O'Hare

I have a psychology degree, but I was a real theater rat. — David Walton

I think movies say a lot [about real life], even more than theater. It says a lot about the invisible, that movies are so fascinating. The camera lens is like a microscope that goes beyond the surface. It's like you're exploring a secret, so you explore the director's secret, you explore the actor's secret, and therefore you explore the universe's secrets. — Isabelle Huppert

Theater represents to me this phenomenon in juxtaposition to real life, where there are all these imposed guidelines. — Adrienne Shelly

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world. — Gore Vidal

I still have a fear of theater. I don't know if I will manage that. I used to do it. I developed a bit of a phobia. It's not a real phobia. I can go in and watch. — Laura Fraser

Why didn't you ask me out?" Layla blurted, suddenly needing to know. She bit the inside of her lip, cursing her impulsive tongue. Her heart beat erratically, thumping hard against her ribs. "Two summers ago when we volunteered at the theater? I kept thinking you might." His hands paused on a spool of twine as he looked at her, his eyes somber. "I wanted to. But I was coming off a difficult relationship - I needed some time." Regret laced his voice. "Chloe Peterson." He nodded. She'd seen them around town for about a year. The grapevine claimed she'd cheated on him with Chris Geiger, but who knew? "I was about to ask you out," he said. "But before I could ... " "Jack." His eyes skimmed over her face. "You have no idea how many times I've regretted waiting." Her face warmed under his perusal. Her pulse skittered. "Wonder what would've happened." One corner of his lips tipped up as a look of serenity passed over his face, displacing the regret. "Who knows. Maybe we'd be engaged for real. — Denise Hunter

I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery. — Andy Serkis

The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty ... for a slice of real life, there's always the Kessler. — Ben Fountain

Our goal at Home Theater Films is to inspire and entertain our audience. We want to make great movies that everyone can enjoy and elevate them with contemporary, relatable characters that naturally demonstrate their faith in real world situations. — Corbin Bernsen

The real theater of the sex war is the domestic hearth. — Germaine Greer

In the world of my imagination, Esther was still my companion, and her love gave me the strength to go forward and explore all my frontiers.
In the real world, she was pure obsession, sapping my energy, taking up all the available space, and obliging me to make an enormous effort just to continue with my life.
How was it possible that, even after two years, I had still not managed to forget her? I could not bear having to think about it anymore, analyzing all the possibilities, and trying
various ways out: deciding simply to accept the situation, writing a book, practicing yoga, doing some charity work, seeing friends, seducing women, going out to supper, to the cinema (always avoiding adaptations of books, of course, and seeking out films that had been specially written for the screen), to the theater, the ballet, to soccer games. The Zahir always won, though; it was always there, making me think, I wish she was here with me. — Paulo Coelho

Although I performed in high school, my first real experience with theater was performing with a student-run organization at Vanderbilt University called The Original Cast where I learned that I loved performing and especially loved theater people. — Nancy Allen

My mother passed away when I was 14, so there were certain things I missed in terms of upbringing. Maybe my mother would have said, 'You have to get a real job.' I don't know because I didn't have that experience. My fortes in school were Spanish, sports, reading and theater. That's what they encouraged. — Joie Lee

A book, an article, could make noise, but ancient warriors before the battle also made noise, and if it wasn't accompanied by real force and immeasurable violence it was only theater. — Elena Ferrante

It is a masterpiece,' said Jules Fougler. 'I hope you will prove yourself worthy of it, Peter. It is the kind of play that depends upon what the members of the audience are capable of bringing with them into the theater. If you are one of those literal-minded people, with a dry soul and a limited imagination, it is not for you. But if you are a real human being with a big, big heart full of laughter, who has preserved the uncorrupted capacity of his childhood for pure emotion-you will find it an unforgettable experience. — Ayn Rand

You are the antidote to any received behaviour. Take a walk when you can. Be alone when you can. Talk to people you care about when you can. We try our best, and somehow it's not enough. We are broken people, the theater shows this. Yet we don't let being inadequate keep us from giving our very best every time. If professionalism has taken the practice of performing to a place where broken human behavior is not acceptable, then it is the medium that is broken, and not the other way around.

For at our essence, at our core, we are not professionals. We are amateurs. We are myth, history and advertising, but, still, we exist; we are real, and we are simply beginners. It's how we thrive. We begin and therefore perpetually remain connected to the spark. We ask questions, we thirst, and we learn. And the dissenters complete us, causing us to be better. — Richard Maxwell

I think the hardest thing I've had to learn is that just because people might speak a certain way in real life doesn't mean it's engaging in the theater. — Paul Downs Colaizzo

I grew up in a town with no movie theater. TV was my only link to the outside world. Film wasn't such a big deal to me. It was TV. So much so, that when I meet TV stars now ... Not my co-workers, but real TV stars, I get nervous. I freak out around them. — DJ Qualls

Having that college-town atmosphere with a live repertory company available was a real gift. I found myself gravitating toward the theater from about the age of nine. I guess it was the environment that got me started. — Christopher Reeve

It seems to me that the thing that makes the theater worthwhile is the fact that it attracts so many people with ideas who are constantly trying to share them with the public. Real art is illumination. It gives a man an idea he never had before or lights up ideas that were formless or only lurking in the shadows of his mind. It adds stature to life. — Brooks Atkinson

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

Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel. Maybe folks don't trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God's got to remind us he's alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer. — Alan Heathcock

Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It's the - the theater of the absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's Iraq headed the UN Committee on Disarmament. — Benjamin Netanyahu

When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out. — Kurt Fuller

In terms of theater, there's not a more supportive theater community than in New York. It's really kind of a real thrill to go there. I mean, don't forget, I'm a boy from the suburbs of Sydney, so getting to New York is a huge, huge thrill. — Hugh Jackman

All the difference in the world between the movies and the thrill I get out of a play at the theater. Ay, yes! Like fooling around with paper dolls when you could be playing with a real live baby. — Edna Ferber

In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high ... the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone ... — George Sarton

In the theater, actors are the essential element of the work. In a film, it's a real collaboration - not that theater isn't, because it is - but it's a collaboration to such an extent that you can give a performance in film that sometimes you look at and you go, "Well, that's not the performance I was trying to give at all." — Karen Allen

The central miscalculation of the Religious Right has been its failure to recognize the real nature of the battle, how long it's been waged, and the high price we've been willing to pay for entry into the political theater. I write as an evangelical Christian who once believed that America is a Christian nation that lost its way. I'm still an evangelical Christian, but I no longer believe that this nation, or any nation in this fallen world, can truly be 'under God. — Michael Babcock

I went to UC Berkeley. I graduated in 1976, immediately moved to L.A. with a degree in English - which did no more for you then than it does for you now - then sold real estate and did theater for nine years. — Kurt Fuller

Pretty much from 1979 through 1988, the backbone of my career was the theater. Working on Broadway a couple of times, working off-Broadway, and also doing a lot of regional theater. Make no mistake, I lived very frugally. I had an apartment that was real cheap. I would get two or three jobs per season, and in between I'd be on unemployment. — Delroy Lindo

As soon as I leave the world [of the show], I want to turn around and come back. That's how real it is. As soon as I leave the theater I want to wake up and come back the next day and do it all over again. It's that much fun. — Victoria Clark

My experience is at The Groundlings Theater, where we created different characters and did sketch comedy. And sometimes the characters were outrageous, but they always came from a real place. So even working there, we had to create characters from the people that we knew. — Cheryl Hines

We're going to be married and hardly touch each other and have to work and work and never have any fun and we're just going to be okay with it because that's how life is and that's how relationships go, but I don't want that. I want our marriage to be ... fun. I love joking around while we fool around. I want to hold hands everywhere we go. I want to make out in the back of a movie theater, steal kisses in coffee shops, have sex over every inch of our apartment or house or wherever we live. And I'm scared marriage will change the fun part of our relationship. The part that keeps us young, keeps us in love, and I'm terrified you'll wake up when you're fifty and realize you're stuck with the decision you made when you were twenty-seven, and we haven't touched in months, we don't go out. I just want to know when that happens ... that you'll still ... you'll still love me. — Cassie Mae

In theater, blood is ketchup; in performance, everything's real. — Marina Abramovic

Everybody loves to play this game - the game of hide-and-seek, the game of scaring oneself with uncertainty. It is human. It is why we go to the theater or movies and why we read novels. And our so-called real life, seen from the position of the mystic, is a version of the same thing. The mystic is the person who has realized that the game is a game. It is hide-and-seek, and everything associated with the "hide" side of it is connected to those places within us where we as individuals feel lonely, impotent, put down, and so on - the negative side of existence. — Alan W. Watts

The real stakes in the theater are high - they are life stakes. That's what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that's a gamble worth taking. — Lauren Bacall

..Well, I did go. To Auschwitz. And the warning was correct. Not because I was not permitted to describe what I had seen, but because I could not describe what I had seen. The piles of glasses. The piles of shoes. The piles of bones. The piles of human hair. I thought that I had never seen the kind of thinking that did this, that I had never seen this kind of reality. Not in movies, not in theater. Yet it was real. — Allan Folsom

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera. — Alton Brown

The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes. — Arthur Miller

It's all sort of dreams and it's all illusion. It's theater; it's not real. We're making up stories, you know, and people tend to run into you and believe you are your characters. And I suppose the funny thing is the longer you go, you do become sort of some version of [your characters]. You both diverge from them - you know - you live, but you also permanently inhabit that geography and that mental space - and so you do morph a little bit. We do become what we imagine. — Bruce Springsteen

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time. — Lewis Black

We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it is
good-and that is the real theater-to
transcend them in the manner of play, by
means of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair,
to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "in
play," show up, transform and reverse
the systems which quietly order us about. — Michel Foucault

Theater to me is acting but it's more real on film. — Ted Shackelford

A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well. — Jello Biafra

Society,
the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye. — Wendell Phillips

I've always loved film, and since I knew I probably couldn't be a cowboy or a spy in real life, I thought I'd play one in a movie! I started doing theater in middle school and tested for 'Victorious' before being in an episode of 'iCarly.' — Spencer Boldman

In books and movies whenever someone dies there is always an underlying subtext, some kind of grand cosmic lesson to be gleaned from the experience. Popular culture perpetuates the fallacy that whenever someone or something is taken away, someone or something else is always out there waiting in the wings to take its place by the last turn of the page or that final post-credits scene. The reader closes the book with a satisfied smile, the audience leaves the theater filled to the brim with warm fuzzy feelings. But that's entertainment for you, and the world would be a far less wonderful place without their happy endings. However, in the real world what once was, no longer is, and survivors are more often than not left with no other choice but to move on, cosmic lessons learned or not. — Kingfisher Pink

Even though I'm an actor, even though I know a little bit about film, I very much view things as an audience member. For me, whether it's TV, film, theater, whatever, it's a big movie, a small movie, whatever it is, I look for the truth in it. I look for the honesty. I just look for if it feels honest and real to me. — Elisabeth Moss

Everything is very convenient now and it would be real nice if somehow people started going back to the movie theater. And it's people of my generation. It's their fault in a lot of ways, people over 40. It's their fault that the only movies are about robots and beautiful vampires. It's wild, all vampires are beautiful. — Billy Bob Thornton

Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the director's eyes, you 'get it right' does not allow for very much creative freedom ... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater. — Mara Wilson

But perhaps we can grant that something happens when the thinking mind takes a vacation. Absence of verbal thought or day-dreaming clearly doesn't mean torpor and vacuity. Rather, it's as if the seat of consciousness escapes from its jumpy, nervous, verbal isolation cell and takes residence in some other section of the theater, where the lights shine more brightly and where things feel more direct, more real. On what street is this theater found? Where are the sensations of life? — Robert Lanza

I was real into theater, and then I tried soccer, acting and ballet. Both my parents didn't want a child-star model, so I didn't get into modeling until I was 14. — Emily Ratajkowski

There was no theater in my high school. I think even our art program was cut - it was so bad. I didn't even know that was a possibility in college or in high school; I hadn't even thought of it. It was pretty negligent. My father has run a bulldozer all of his life, and my mom is in real estate. — Boyd Holbrook

As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy. — Lily Rabe

I do not understand those who spend hours at the theater watching scenes between people whom they would not listen to for five minutes in real life. — Natalie Clifford Barney

A farmer's work in many ways is like setting a stage. In theater, stage managers lay out furniture and props, set up lights, and clean to get a set ready for actors to take over and create a show. Farmers plow, fertilize, set up irrigation systems and fences, and otherwise prep the stage of their farms for the real actors -- the sun and the life within the seeds and animals -- to create the show. — Ben Hartman

Death is a theater, full of everyone you've ever met, watching a real-time replay of your life, with your every thought narrated out loud. — Fran Krause

I've worked with a lot of great glamorous girls in movies and the theater. And I'll admit, I've often thought it would be wonderful to be a femme fatale. But then I'd always come back to thinking that if they only had what I've had - a family, real love, an anchor - they would have been so much happier during all the hours when the marquees and the floodlights are dark. — Eve Arden

I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously. — Mike Nichols