Theatrical Quotes

• Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Wall, Moving, Mean

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• Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.148, Harvard University Press

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• I'm there to make a kind of theatrical music that is desperately missing in my life. And if other people don't like it, I'm very unhappy, but I can't do anything about that.

  Richard Foreman

  People, Missing, Unhappy

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• I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Two, Play

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• In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.

  Woody Harrelson

  Play, Actors, Lines

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• I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Artist, Fire, Flames

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• Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical.

  Dylan Moran

  Book, Thinking, Black

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Although one may fail to find happiness in theatrical life, one never wishes to give it up after having once tasted its fruits.

  Anna Pavlova

  Giving, Wish, Theatre

  Quoted in A H Franks (ed) Pavlova: A Biography,'Pages of My Life' (1956).

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• When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.

  Roger Corman

  Matter, Today, Film

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• Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.

  Camille Paglia

  Nature, Imagination, Action

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.

  Kathleen Turner

  Women, Years, Careers

  "Why I'm moving to Europe". Interview with Sharon Krum, www.theguardian.com. January 17, 2006.

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• The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Military, Hands, Cities

  Elizabeth Hardwick (1984). “Bartleby in Manhattan, and Other Essays”, Vintage

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• There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage.

  Dabney Coleman

  New York, School, Thinking

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• I had a feeling it was gonna work out because not only did I enjoy the music and hit it off with the guys, but I was into theatrical rock and was willing to wear makeup and do anything to make it.

  Ace Frehley

  Makeup, Rocks, Work Out

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• I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga. They said I was very theatrical... So they said, you're Gaga.

  Lady Gaga

  New York, Said, Call Me

  "How Stefani Germanotta Became Lady Gaga". Interview with Barbara Walters, abcnews.go.com. January 21, 2010.

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• In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don't really need to explain very much at all - you just say he's a spy and he's a little bit theatrical and overblown and smug and he's not very good at his job.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Jobs, Spy, Needs

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. July 18, 2003.

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• But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.

  Anthony Trollope

  Hero, Clouds, Years

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Ayala's Angel”, p.306, Jester House Publishing

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• Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

  James Agate

  Player, Theatre, Directors

  James Agate (1944). “Ego 6: Once More the Autobiography of James Agate”

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• The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.

  John Adams

  Political, Independence, Glory

  John Adams (2016). “John Adams: Writings from the New Nation, 1784-1826”, p.652, Library of America

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• I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.

  Aaron Sorkin

  Drama, Writing, Perfection

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• I was always a drama queen. I remember playing in the kitchen, trying to get my mom to think I was dead and call the police. When she didn't, I would cry. I was always theatrical. I don't think any of my relatives are surprised.

  Amy Lee

  Mom, Queens, Drama

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• The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Drama, Intellectual

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Evil, Theatre, Months

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• Young artists wish for inspired moments. And you find them; you take them; eager artists are bandits. Theatrical moments arrive, and...you grab. Good! You know it will draw attention to you. But you aim to be more than bandits, no? So, okay...now be Samurai.

  Jerzy Grotowski

  Artist, Wish, Attention

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• And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway as far as I'm concerned is in New York the pride of New York theater.

  Tony Kushner

  Art, New York, Mean

  "Pulitzer-winning playwright talks gay marriage, Obama, new play". Interview with Chris Welch, www.cnn.com. June 15, 2009.

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