Constantin Stanislavski Quotations

All art is autobiographical - if it's not, it's not going to quicken on-stage, and it's not going to come alive.

I was born an ordinary actor. I will die an ordinary actor. But I've persisted.

You must be so thoroughly immersed in the given circumstances of the play, then you decide what it is at any given moment what that the actor wants.

Gratuitous cruelty borders on the pathological, psychotic and that becomes uninteresting because there is no choice.

Don't go so deep in yourself that you no longer exist for your partner and for the character and for the play.

The first theatre I ever found was in the backyard of a new suburban community in the foothills of the Poconos. My dad was a young FBI agent at his first or second posting - we're all from New York. He was posted in Scranton, Pennsylvania and he put the family in a brand new red-brick apartment. It was in a C-shape and behind it was a small hill that led up to the woods. There was a white-washed brick wall that was a perfect theatre! There were windows and all the ladies behind the windows in their apartments. I would go out there after lunch every day and sing opera.

In talking about a genius, you would not say that he lies; he sees realities with different eyes from ours.

The character has to have some kind of arch. The character has to go through an event, and be changed by the human event.

I have taken film-work that has been a little more cliché-written, to support myself and my family, and that's a whole kind of other challenge. It's like chopping wood: You've got to take what you can get and bless what withstands you. But in theatre! There's enough great theatre that you can find something interesting!

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.