Brantley Quotes

#1. You're awake." I hold my breath when I hear Brantley's scratchy just-waking-up voice. How is it that even that's sexy? My morning voice sounds like an eighty year old woman who's smoked a pack a day since she was two.

Ra'chael Ohara

#2. Country music has its way of getting into the minds and hearts of people. I will say - you never know how long it's gonna take something to grow, you never know if you're gonna hit in a certain market.

Brantley Gilbert

#3. The eternal ambiguity of human motives and memory.

Ben Brantley

#4. I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others.

Ben Brantley

#5. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

#6. Tattoos. Anyone who doesn't like my art can kick rocks.

T.M. Frazier

#7. Theater criticism should be visceral, at least on some level, an articulation of that fierceness and passion. I usually do a fair amount of research before I see a show - on the history of previous productions (if it's a revival) and the creative team.

Ben Brantley

#8. Fooles bite one another, but wise-men agree together.

George Herbert

#9. THE HOT (AND SERIOUSLY COOL) ENERGY that comes from the musical gospel preached by the title character of FELA! feels as if it could stretch easily to the borders of Manhattan and then across a river or two. There should be dancing in the streets!

Ben Brantley

#10. Cyndi Lauper knows how to work a crowd.

Ben Brantley

#11. I've seen plays that are, objectively, total messes that move me in ways that their tidier brethren do not. That's the romantic mystery of great theater. Translating this ineffability into printable prose is a challenge that can never be fully met.

Ben Brantley

#12. Whether you like it or not, a performance's triumphs and belly flops come to seem excruciatingly intimate, as if you were somehow partly responsible for them.

Ben Brantley

#13. I can honestly say that everything I've ever listened to has influenced me or motivated me in one way, form or fashion.

Brantley Gilbert

#14. If you agree with a critic, you admire him or her. If you disagree, you despise them. We all feel a great need to be confirmed in our opinions.

Ben Brantley

#15. My life is like a Harley Ride. When I'm on my bike that's really one of the places I feel completely at home.

Brantley Gilbert

#16. Daily habits can anchor your thoughts and feelings just as readily as any spiritual practice or yoga class.

Jeffrey Brantley

#17. Rage properly channeled can definitely give birth to good even great theater. Disgust, a more passive and distancing emotion, is far less likely to. Would you rush to a play called Look Back in Queasiness?

Ben Brantley

#18. I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.

Ben Brantley

#19. I have received hostile voice mail messages and e-mails. They are often anonymous, I'm sad to say, as anonymous messages are delivered only by very low forms of human life, in my opinion.

Ben Brantley

#20. If you can't live it down, might as well live it up.

Brantley Gilbert

#21. EVERY SINGLE DANCER, SINGER and BAND MEMBER is a BRILLIANT SOLO ARTIST

Ben Brantley

#22. The idea that corporations have the same First Amendment protections of free speech as people is troubling. Corporations are not people. They don't attend our schools, get married and have children. They don't vote in our elections.

Hank Johnson

#23. We weren't raised to take, we were raised to give the shirt off our back to anyone in need.

Brantley Gilbert

#24. Be prepared to have the breath knocked out of you.

Ben Brantley

#25. The doctor says he has to amputate all of me.

Steven Wright

#26. Like most actors, I've always been grateful for Chinese restaurants; they were often the only places that stayed open late enough for performers to get hot food after the show.

Ginger Rogers

#27. Christian Fiction is like a parable. The story is made up, but the truth is brought to life. Enjoy the story, but savor the truth.

Mary Ann Brantley

#28. When people ask me why are you singing a drinking song if you don't drink anymore, because when I did drink I drank enough to sing drinking songs for the rest of my life!

Brantley Gilbert

#29. I think it's just a conglomerate of everybody's influences that comes out on the record, and live as well.

Brantley Gilbert

#30. It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement.

Ben Brantley

#31. The cliche was always that 'everybody's a critic,' but it becomes truer every day. Long before reviews appear in the traditional outlets, you can now usually discover - somewhere in the thickets of the Internet - reactions to shows from people who've seen them in previews.

Ben Brantley

#32. hand. Mex turned and walked toward his study, leaving the door open. Vicente Vega followed. If Vega looked around at his home, Mex didn't know. He didn't care.

Peg Brantley