When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood or ...season of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of inno...vative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after th...e free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by ...the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in... Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every actor and musician has a text upon which to base his art, but he can treat the text in one of two ways. The difference lies ...in how much the performer believes his own work can be "notated." In music, this means asking how far the system of musical signs printed on the page can actually represent the music the composer heard in his head. If you believe these signs--the notes, the loud and soft markings, tempo indications--are an adequate language, then in performing the piece you concentrate on realizing in sound what you, the performer, read. If you believe music cannot be adequately notated, then your task in the performance is to find what is missing from the printed page. The actor has a similar choice. He can treat the text either as a set of suggestions for a character in Shakespeare's or Ibsen's mind, suggestions which cannot be ignored, but leave him much freedom, or he can treat the text as bible which, once understood, will tell him how to act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse t...o explore, a document to verify.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We're headed for collapse, if you want my opinion, Missy. I can see it in the fallin' off of the quality of vagrants. There was a ...time you could find real good company in almost any jungle you'd pick, men who could talk, men who'd read a book now and then; and now, what do you find, a lot of dirty little guttersnipes no decent tramp would want to associate with. Well, it's been that way all through history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external worl...d by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »