Sommer Quotes & Sayings

A shallow mind will never possess a true heart. — Sommer Hamilton

Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning. — Frederick Sommer

The smallest modification of tonality affects structure. Some things have to be rather large, but elegance is the presentation of things in their minimum dimensions. — Frederick Sommer

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

Before 'Mad Men,' I definitely had very dry spells and I know what those feel like, and I don't think that ever leaves you as an actor. — Rich Sommer

You have a peace about you. You have a wisdom. You have a way of living life that kicks my butt and pushes me around, and it beats me out of my idiocy and narrow-mindness. You, Addy, you, have shown me what life is all about — Heath Sommer

Gaming has been a great way to get to know people. That's part of what I love about games, that they are social. — Rich Sommer

In total acceptance, almost everything becomes a revelation. — Frederick Sommer

Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles. — Frederick Sommer

('Mad Men') was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened. — Rich Sommer

I am a board game enthusiast, a board game evangelist, a board game nerd, but I wouldn't say I'm 'keen' because I very rarely win, and 'keen' suggests you're actually good at something. But I do play a lot of them, and I have a pretty good-sized collection. — Rich Sommer

For the sensory thinker, the world of the mind bears a direct physical resemblance to the world outside. — Robert Sommer

Ideas and thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions. — Frederick Sommer

When standing at the gates of hell, one must open the door. — Sommer Nectarhoff

I've certainly had less practice at fatherhood than I have at acting, but in fatherhood, at least my failures are private! — Rich Sommer

Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway. — Rich Sommer

My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since. — Rich Sommer

It depends on me whether life is good or not. Not on life, on me. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Some speak of a return to nature, I wonder where they could have been? — Frederick Sommer

I'm a Joseph Abboud fan. I'm a Hugo Boss fan. I'm a Brooks Brothers fan. As far as suits go, those are my go-tos. — Rich Sommer

Part of what I love about games is that, even if you're best friends with somebody, it gives you these sort of moments where you get to interact on a completely different level. You all agree to these abstract rules, but there's nobody holding a gun to your head. — Rich Sommer

The field of action of a photograph should be that chessboard of the heart and mind upon which poetry and art have always operated — Frederick Sommer

Everything is a present. Everything. This I learned to be thankful for everything. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I think backwards. "This was beautiful." Instead of forward. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I abhor 'baby talk.' I speak to kids like I would any other person, and they seem to respond to it. — Rich Sommer

I was born optimistic ... I was laughing from the beginning of my life. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I think not every improviser is a good stage actor. Certainly not every stage actor is a good improviser. — Rich Sommer

Anytime you're on camera, 95 percent of whatever character you're playing, unless you're Daniel Day-Lewis - or maybe, no, pretty much just him - you're cast because you're you. — Rich Sommer

Music was our food ... When we can play, it can't be so terrible. The music, the music! — Alice Herz-Sommer

Storytelling is an essential part of our cultural and human identity...when we become afraid of stories outside the mainstream, I believe we have lost a valuable part of our cultural inheritance and growth. — Louise Sommer

In any case, life is beautiful, extremely beautiful. And when you are old you appreciate it more. When you are older you think, you remember, you care and you appreciate. You are thankful for everything. For everything. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Only when we are so old, only, are we aware of the beauty of life. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I've always been an optimist and I believe laughter is a wonderful thing — Alice Herz-Sommer

Hatred eats the soul of the hater, not the hated. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Music saved my life and Music saves me still. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky. — Rich Sommer

Ideas and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow. — Frederick Sommer

Complaining doesn't change people ... All that complain, this is terrible ... It's not so terrible. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Art accepts what it finds. — Frederick Sommer

I have an RSS reader, Feeddler. I mostly subscribe to board game blogs - they have reviews of new games and discussions about trends. It's straight-up dork talk. — Rich Sommer

I know about the bad, but I look at the good thing. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they're a game, that's where they should end. Things shouldn't start as games and be taken to movies. — Rich Sommer

If I could find them (assemblages) in nature I would photograph them. I make them because through photography I have a knowledge of things that can't be found. — Frederick Sommer

The only way to understand something is to be confronted by something that is difficult to understand. — Frederick Sommer

Every day in life is beautiful ... every day! — Alice Herz-Sommer

I'm a bit of a nerd, and my extracurricular activity is nerd games. — Rich Sommer

The amount of times my wife has rolled her eyes at board games is impossible to count. — Rich Sommer

After 'Urinetown,' 'Avenue Q' and now 'Mormon,' is there an envelope remaining to be pushed? — Rich Sommer

He called me whore, slut, bitch ... all the beautiful ugly words that secretly thrilled me. — Sommer Marsden

Personal space refers to an area with invisible boundaries surrounding a person's body into which intruders may not come. — Robert Sommer

I'll usually stay up a little later than my wife and play Xbox, a little 'Modern Warfare 3.' Or I'll have a friend over, and we'll play board games until late at night. I'll always choose fun over sleep. — Rich Sommer

I don't know if it's the sunshine, or the fact that I actually have a job, but I do like L.A. a lot. In New York, it can be gray and rainy and cold, and you still don't have any money, and you feel like a bad Dickens character. — Rich Sommer

Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play. — Frederick Sommer

Art is images you carry. You cannot carry nature with you, but you carry images of nature. When you go out to make a picture you find you are moved by something which is in agreement with an image you already held within yourself. — Frederick Sommer

Choice and chance structure art and nature. — Frederick Sommer

The coherent way of investigating any field is to examine its possible relatedness to other things. — Frederick Sommer

I'm pretty quick to delete something off of my phone if it's become obsolete. And things like RSS readers have made life easier - all of the headlines are going to be related to a topic I'm interested in. — Rich Sommer

Everything is shared by everything else; there are no discontinuities. — Frederick Sommer

And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love. — Alice Herz-Sommer

In college, my friend Melanie and I used to have weekly Jimmy Stewart viewings, and 'Harvey' seemed to make its way into the rotation an inordinate amount of times. — Rich Sommer

The Art of Vermeer must have been there on the morning of creation. — Frederick Sommer

Having a low opinion of yourself is not 'modesty.' It's self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not 'egotism.' It's a necessary precondition to happiness and success. — Bobbe Sommer

The 12 years that I was improvising are why I got the number of commercials I got when I was in New York and why I got 'The Devil Wears Prada,' and it's why I even got in the door for 'Mad Men.' — Rich Sommer

I only aim for fashion that's long dead. — Rich Sommer

Never buy your own hype. — Sommer Marsden

The work that I've gotten in the hiatuses seems to indicate that I will have a little more work after 'Mad Men' than I did when I was scraping by while I was temping in New York, but who knows? People very easily could be like, 'Meh, we're done with that. We've got Jon Hamm. We're good without the weird one with glasses.' — Rich Sommer

I can juggle, not well ... I can balance a broom on my chin. I can do very simple carny tricks, a little sleight of hand with cards and coins. — Rich Sommer

Three times a year, there's Strategicon convention, and I go for the board games. It happens Presidents Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day weekends. You go and take a look at the new board games and meet a couple of board game designers, and you can check out games you don't own from the library and then return them. — Rich Sommer

Words represent images: nothing can be said for which there is no image. — Frederick Sommer

Art and accident are one. — Frederick Sommer

Civic participation depends on creativity, an (aesthetic) knack for reframing experience, and on a corollary freedom to adjust laws and practices in light of ever-new challenges. Without art, citizenship would shrink to compliance, as if society were a closed text. Reading lessons would stop at the factual "what is," rather than continue to the speculative "what if. — Doris Sommer

I was a temp for three years in New York when I was auditioning; when I was cast in 'Mad Men,' I was still a temp. I'm good at making copies; I'm good at typing things. I'm good at killing the day and making it look like I'm doing something. — Rich Sommer

For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for 'Mad Men,' I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That's about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, 'Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.' — Rich Sommer

Reality is greater than our dreams. — Frederick Sommer

I would be lucky to be remembered as Harry Crane. That being said, I think it's a goal for most actors to have the opportunity to play a variety of characters, so I hope any non-'Mad Men' role feels as separate as possible from Harry. — Rich Sommer

I have lived through many wars and have lost everything many times Yet, life is beautiful, and I have so much to learn and enjoy. I have no space nor time for pessimism and hate. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I'm very, very fortunate to be in the job that I'm in, and I would love for it to continue forever, but it won't. I have to financially and emotionally prepare for the day that 'Mad Men' will go away, because who knows what my next job is going to be? — Rich Sommer

I felt that this is the only thing which helps me to have hope ... a sort of religion, actually. Music is God. — Alice Herz-Sommer

We work for that part of our vision which is uncompleted. — Frederick Sommer

Life is beautiful. You have to be thankful that we are living. Wherever you look is beauty. I know about the bad things, but I look for the good things. — Alice Herz-Sommer

The worst job I ever had was as a telemarketer for, oh, I don't know, I think I made it about 90 minutes. I quit before lunch. I went in around 10:30 or 11 and said, 'I can't do this.' It was horrific. I had too many people yell at me within that 90 minutes to be able to continue. — Rich Sommer

I could take a cow and implant a camera in it and let it amble around the city or in its own domain (I say a cow because a human being I would not trust). If the camera was programmed to go off at an indeterminate series of moments, the samplings would be fantastic. — Frederick Sommer

I listen to a lot of podcasts, which are split down the middle between comedy and board game podcasts, and a couple of eclectic ones like 'The Dinner Party' from NPR, where they take an event that happened that week in history and give you a cocktail recipe inspired by it. — Rich Sommer

I don't have the confidence to pull off a moustache. — Rich Sommer

Music was our way of remembering our inner selves, our values. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I'm very happy to say goodbye to the three-button suits. I hate three-button suits. Some people can pull them off, but they're legitimately really, really skinny. Unfortunately, the only people who actually wear them are, like, Mr. Monopoly, and people like that. — Rich Sommer

My photographs are not pure: they are a seething wealth of imperfection. — Frederick Sommer

The worst thing in life is boredom. When people don't know what to do with themselves, they are very, very poor. — Alice Herz-Sommer

Photography is a distributive act leading to a privileged condition. — Frederick Sommer

God is A.W.E.S.O.M.E! HE is Always Working Extraordinary Supernatural On-time Miracles Everyday — Sommer Ellison

Every day is a miracle. No matter how bad my
circumstances, I have the freedom to choose my
attitude to life, even to find joy. Evil is not new.
It is up to us how we deal with both good and bad.
No one can take this power away from us. — Alice Herz-Sommer

My roomate at 'Harvey' is this guy Morgan Spector, an actor in town, and I've taught him Hive and Fastrack. Others have played For the Win, but Cards Against Humanity has been the dressing room hit. We've had the understudies, even Jim Parsons playing it. Our dressing room is practically sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. — Rich Sommer

Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities. — Frederick Sommer

I am Jewish, but Beethoven is my religion. — Alice Herz-Sommer

When you are optimistic, when you are not complaining, when you look at the good side of your life, everybody loves you. — Alice Herz-Sommer

I would like to ban people being allowed to text while in a crosswalk. — Rich Sommer