Top 100 Perlman Quotes
#1. It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy.
Peter Scolari
#2. I look at raising funds for The Perlman Music Program as a challenge and as a way to provide opportunities for people who care about the future of classical music.
Itzhak Perlman
#3. I was kind of like the Rhea Perlman of the bar. I was like Carla on 'Cheers.' People were more afraid of me. There was a point where I got a little surly. There were only so many chicken wings I could serve before losing the smile on my face.
Melissa Rauch
#4. The Violin of my dreams. If you wanna play a pianissimo that is almost inaudible and yet it carries through a hall that seats 3,000 people, there's your Strad.
Itzhak Perlman
#5. No child should be raised in a system. A system isn't a parent. Even the system knows this, which is why the Children and Family Services Division puts so much effort into finding permanent homes for the kids who are never going to be reunited with their birth parents.
Rhea Perlman
#6. Death is a thief, the grandest perpetrator of larceny of all. It robs the potential of all the things left undone and reimburses the living with bits of memories that, with each day, pass through the fingers like a handful of sand.
Ron Perlman
#7. "Striking looking." That's a euphemism if I ever heard one.
Ron Perlman
#8. I actually think it's harder to play vulnerability, because you're having to delve deeper into portions of your own psyche, what it is that makes you human.
Ron Perlman
#9. Being an insomniac only slows me down. I try not to write at night, as I'm concerned that this will affect the quality. I might have a Scotch to keep me going, but I like to be as awake and as alert as possible.
Elliot Perlman
#10. I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.
Itzhak Perlman
#12. Look at the people who are coming to television Ridley Scott, Ang Lee or Guillermo del Toro - all these great filmmakers - actively put themselves back into TV. That's because the environment is very encouraging for bold storytelling, storytelling that you've never seen before.
Ron Perlman
#13. You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did
Elliot Perlman
#14. The guidance of a cultured human being will always beat the click of a mouse.
Elliot Perlman
#15. Every musical phrase has a purpose. It's like talking. If you talk with a particular purpose, people listen to you, but if you just recite, it's not as meaningful.
Itzhak Perlman
#16. The every day activity of slaves reproduces slavery
Fredy Perlman
#17. I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.
Ron Perlman
#18. Hell is the special pain that dwells in that loss which you yourself have caused
Elliot Perlman
#19. We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects." In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply "accept" imperfection when it is revealed to us - we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship.
Ron Perlman
#21. I've had biker clubs reach out to me whenever they knew I was in their city.
Ron Perlman
#22. I never direct myself, because I don't like working with me. I would punch me in the mouth if I had to take my direction.
Ron Perlman
#23. I just think that there are those people that their resolve is strengthened by what it is that's keeping them down, and there are some people that will buckle under it. You never know which one is which until you get into the eighth or ninth round of the fight.
Ron Perlman
#24. Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie.
Ron Perlman
#25. I couldn't only do one thing
I don't want the personal hell of oneness.
Itzhak Perlman
#26. Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.
Ron Perlman
#27. Charisma will sustain a relationship only in the way that strong coffee first thing in the morning will sustain a career.
Elliot Perlman
#28. A sponge has that much absorbent capability and after a while you can pour water over it and nothing stays.
Itzhak Perlman
#29. I do three things. I do teaching, I do conducting and I do playing. And each one of those sort of helps the other.
Itzhak Perlman
#30. I've done millions of mediocre movies. I've done way more than my fair share. You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school.
Ron Perlman
#31. I've been a professional actor for almost 40 years.
Ron Perlman
#32. As my name might suggest, I'm Jewish. My grandparents were Polish and Russian Jews who came to Australia in the late 1920s, and had they not, we wouldn't be talking now.
Elliot Perlman
#33. I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.
Elliot Perlman
#34. Fearless people are interesting to watch.
Ron Perlman
#35. Literature is nothing more than the expansion of storytelling. Storytelling is obviously the impulse to chronicle something you've been through in order to give it its due, to have a catharsis.
Ron Perlman
#36. Preparing for a future in music is an expensive proposition.
Itzhak Perlman
#37. Same thing with harmonies. If you hear something that harmonically is interesting, express it. So that's what I'm saying about talking the music rather than just playing through.
Itzhak Perlman
#38. I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.
Elliot Perlman
#39. I can't really remember a time in my life when I didn't know something about what we call the Holocaust. It was this dark topic that I would know more about when I got older, but which was spoken about in hushed tones.
Elliot Perlman
#40. In the early '90s, when those little art films started coming out, we were introduced to Quentin Tarantino and guys like that, and independent cinema was something that everyone wanted to be a part of.
Ron Perlman
#42. I say yes to almost anything that comes my way.
Ron Perlman
#43. Steinbeck wasn't the thirties and Dickens wasn't the eighteen-hundreds. They were of their times but for the ages. Their writings are not products marketed for a brief time until they're out of vogue and discarded on the scrap heap.
Elliot Perlman
#45. I had an opportunity to be in Frank's [Sinatra] circle, but I couldn't take advantage of it because I couldn't get over how awed I was by him. It was so uncomfortable for me because he meant so much to me, but I just couldn't be myself, so I fled rather than having those great nights hanging out.
Ron Perlman
#46. I've always wanted to have my own studio because this is a way for me to finally take all things that I've always dreamt about and actually put them into action.
Ron Perlman
#47. For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.
Itzhak Perlman
#48. Somebody who doesn't care if they live or die is the most dangerous human being on earth.
Ron Perlman
#49. The reason his father has no time for poetry is that he is afraid of the messiness of life. Poetry feeds on all that spills over the boundaries of the usual things, the everyday things with which most people are obsessed, so William has no time for it.
Elliot Perlman
#50. I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.
Itzhak Perlman
#51. Ask many of us who are disabled what we would like in life and you would be surprised how few would say, 'Not to be disabled.' We accept our limitations.
Itzhak Perlman
#52. I'm not a social rider. Strictly professional.
Ron Perlman
#53. If you play something well, I don't care what it is. I mean, I don't play an electric [violin] - I tried. It's actually interesting.
Itzhak Perlman
#54. When I was a kid, I loved having a book in my hand. I still do. I wasn't a fast reader, but I was a steady reader. I read all of The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames books.
Rhea Perlman
#55. This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in five or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development.
Itzhak Perlman
#56. I've certainly been very blessed with opportunity.
Ron Perlman
#57. I can actually see the sound in my head. I can actually see it ... But each sound is different so this one has that sparkle, there is a sparkle to the sound.
Itzhak Perlman
#58. Another thing that I don't like to do is show too much how it goes. I do it once in a blue moon. Sometimes there are lessons when I don't pick up a violin at all.
Itzhak Perlman
#60. None of us are any better than anyone else and none of us are any worse than anyone else, and we're all equal and whatever we can do to celebrate our commonality rather than our differences, which is what religion does, to me ... religion just compartmentalizes people and makes everybody into a box.
Ron Perlman
#61. You know, I don't read the blogs, or go on the internet, and I really just don't know what people are saying because ... well I guess I'm afraid to.
Ron Perlman
#62. We too often laughed at the same time to be a whore and a lonely guy.
Elliot Perlman
#63. It can be a huge help to parents considering the adoption of an older child, when college is just a few years away, to know that there are post-adoption resources and specific financial assistance opportunities available to them.
Rhea Perlman
#64. I expect that everything I do will be not watched or not seen. That way, I'm never disappointed when I become flooded with that reality.
Ron Perlman
#65. Beethoven concertos ... Tchaicovsky concertos ... with a lot of these wonderful masterpieces there's always something wonderful to find ... there's always something new to find ...
Itzhak Perlman
#66. Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.
Ron Perlman
#67. I always wanted my kids to like me and think I was funny, so I made up this story about a kid named Jake and his racecar that he had built from scratch, fully loaded with whatever fantastical gadget he or I wanted him to have at the moment. I loved making up the stories off the top of my head.
Rhea Perlman
#68. If something strikes me as insane and unjust, I cannot tolerate that.
Ron Perlman
#69. Season 4 can be deadly for a show that's been a hit show.
Ron Perlman
#70. I know that at literary festivals I'm speaking mostly to middle-class women, who frequently vote in a way that is contrary to how I'd like them to vote.
Elliot Perlman
#72. I like to believe that everyone is born with the same skill set, and that it is the influences that one comes upon.
Ron Perlman
#73. Children are resilient and strong with powerful spirits.
Rhea Perlman
#74. Any good thing that happens to someone you love can only be good for you too.
Rhea Perlman
#75. The secret to success is to try to never figure that out.
Rhea Perlman
#76. So many things can drive you mad as a child, not only music.
Itzhak Perlman
#77. I'm just a one-instrument player. I have been known to play a blender, but I basically play - just play the violin.
Itzhak Perlman
#78. This has been my vocation to make music of what remains.
Itzhak Perlman
#79. Competition can be the most nerve-racking experience. Some people just thrive on it.
Itzhak Perlman
#80. Perhaps people ought to feel with more imagination.
Elliot Perlman
#81. I don't walk on stage unless I'm playing with a orchestra. But when I play a recital, I'm sort of on a scooter, and I just scoot very quickly on stage, and they're saying, wow, look at this. He's so fast.
Itzhak Perlman
#82. Everybody has a different kind of talent and a different timetable as to when they develop ..
Itzhak Perlman
#83. I, for one, am not nearly as engaged when I'm looking at something that's been completely drawn up on a computer that replaces anything that's in real time and real space. It just engages me all the less, rather than all the more.
Ron Perlman
#84. 1% of the population has all the money and the other 99% have nothing.
Ron Perlman
#85. I never pictured myself in California. I just thought I would be a character actress in New York on the stage. I never really had that stardom goal; I just wanted to be able to work as an actress and not as a waitress.
Rhea Perlman
#86. I always say separate your abilities from your disabilities. You know, if I could play the violin, I don't have to play it standing up. I can play it sitting down and so on.
Itzhak Perlman
#87. You get more nervous in front of a lot of people. That's why, when you play a concerto, you play with a small orchestra, in some place where you don't feel that it is as important as Carnegie Hall.
Itzhak Perlman
#89. Let me put it this way: I definitely need to understand the villains I play. The best cause pain to anesthetize themselves against their own pain.
Ron Perlman
#90. There's one thing about TV that I really think is true. If you find the right cast and the right writers, and you got some chemistry going, even if a show is taking a little while to find an audience, if you keep it there, that audience will find it. Because that's what happened with 'Cheers.'
Rhea Perlman
#91. Fuck waiting for the world to change you; you start by trying to change it. And if you are pure of heart and your intentions are good, you can't lose. Even if nothing happens, you can't lose.
Ron Perlman
#92. Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.
Itzhak Perlman
#93. This machine, the wheelchair, I can go all over the place, but you need a place without stairs to get in.
Itzhak Perlman
#94. After a while, if you're a writer, you want to start appearing in the bookstores of the place you're living in.
Elliot Perlman
#95. In Paris they have special wheelchairs that go through every doorway. They don't change the doorways, they change the wheelchairs. To hell with the people! If someone weighs a couple more pounds, that's it!
Itzhak Perlman
#96. I will not do a role that I don't think I can do, that I'm not interested in, where there's no humanity, that doesn't have any kind of handle for me at all because I know I'll just stink the joint up.
Ron Perlman
#97. He sits in his car at traffic lights on his way out sometimes and tries to estimate how many times he has sat here, waiting at these traffic lights on his way somewhere without you, hoping to meet someone with the capacity to consign you to an anecdote, to be eventually confused with others
Elliot Perlman
#98. Really, I was such a late bloomer, I really didn't learn how to be me until I was in my late '40s, which is when I started playing roles that were closer to me.
Ron Perlman
#99. That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.
Itzhak Perlman
#100. There are people who are uncanny, who are finished products at a young age. I wasn't, thank God.
Itzhak Perlman
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