Top 100 Quotes About Great Plays
#1. When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.
Al Pacino
#2. And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.
Tony Randall
#3. One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave. You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.
Adam Rapp
#4. Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Mike Nichols
#5. Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'
Stephen Sondheim
#6. I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.
Marian Seldes
#7. Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.
Mike Nichols
#8. It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world.
Bill Nighy
#10. Like I always say, it's not how many great plays you make; it's how few bad ones you make. I know fans, and even some losing coaches, are enamored with long pass completions or the great run plays, but that doesn't offset the interception or the fumble.
Jimmy Johnson
#11. My advice to young people who want to act is just to do it as much as you can! Find friends who also want to do it and have readings of great plays in your apartment. You don't have to wait for someone else to tell you that you can do it. You can be getting better on your own all the time.
Sarah Steele
#12. Shakespeare wrote great plays that we're still watching all these years later. Charlie Chaplin made great comedies and they are still as funny today as they ever were.
Leonard Maltin
#13. I spent so many years of my life as a stage actor and when you do all these plays, a lot of really great plays are very politically driven. They deal with deep social issues, and that's the kind of stuff that I love, as an audience member.
Danny Strong
#14. At Juilliard, suddenly I was reading these great plays that could articulate the ways I was feeling in the Marine Corps, and that felt very therapeutic, by putting words to feelings, in a big way.
Adam Driver
#15. I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
Tracy Letts
#16. The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.
Stephen Daldry
#17. It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!
Audrey Tautou
#18. If that thy fame with ev'ry toy be pos'd, 'Tis a thin web, which poysonous fancies make; But the great souldier's honour was compos'd Of thicker stuf, which would endure a shake. Wisdom picks friends; civility plays the rest; A toy shunn'd cleanly passeth with the best.
George Herbert
#19. Memory is a great servant, but really bad master. When memory plays its role as a master, it limits our choices. It choices doors for us. We react to every single thing in our life because of our memory.
Ika Natassa
#20. I think Ryan Gosling is a really great actor who's meticulous about his work. And I'd love to have the guts that Johnny Depp has to actually go outside the box on a character. When he plays a character, he plays it in a way that nobody else would.
Ashton Kutcher
#21. The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, Anabasis, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly's Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I
Pierce Brown
#22. You know, the blond guy plays the good guy and I play the bad part, the bad guys. Which is a lot of fun. Playing the bad guy is great. And it's the whole British thing. You know, in so many films the bad guy is British. Gary Oldman makes a living doing that.
Matt Robinson
#23. You could argue that if the average golfer plays a golf course with 430-yard par 4s and they always miss the green, that's good practice. It's definitely great practice to play a course that's too long for you.
Amy Alcott
#24. Most people miss the great part mental outlook plays in this game.
Billy Martin
#25. A city plays the role of a great big magnet that's sucking people up.
Geoffrey West
#26. Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.
Pele
#27. Even though Sachin is great, I have always found Rahul more solid and hard to get out. He has a solid defense and plays less shots than others. When a batsman plays less shots then it is tough to get him as he makes less mistakes.
Shoaib Akhtar
#28. Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#29. The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in ... the part he plays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#30. Whether they know it or not, most American playgoers owe an incalculably great debt to translators. Were it not for their work, comparatively few of us would be able to enjoy the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen or Moliere.
Terry Teachout
#31. Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#32. The egos in this industry are incredibly vulnerable and everybody's afraid to wipe out. So everybody plays it safe and everybody tells everybody else how great they are.
Michelle Rodriguez
#33. Ed Catmull has thought a lot about the role luck plays at a great company, and how businesspeople manage that luck. It's all in the preparedness, he says, and in creating a culture that can adapt to the unexpected. "These things are always going to happen. What separates you is your response,
Brent Schlender
#34. Paul Robeson was an athlete, Rutgers valedictorian, lawyer, writer, actor in movies and plays, great voice - a black male doing it all, back when some people thought he shouldn't. One reason I do all the things I do is to break stereotypes that people can only do certain things.
Dhani Jones
#35. The mind may never achieve or express anything great unless emotion plays a part.
Ben Johnson
#36. I'm a great believer in getting checked out because if you know you're OK, you actually feel better; your mind plays a big part of it.
Simon Cowell
#37. One of the reasons why I love to do Shakespeare is that this great artist was able to talk to a wide variety of audiences. He could do the bawdy plays and the humor and the clowns-as you know, because you're a wonderful Stephano-that speaks to the populace, the masses, the groundlings, whatever.
Julie Taymor
#38. I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#39. All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don t ever let up. Don t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain.
George S. Patton Jr.
#40. In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating, but for everything.
Ben Carson
#41. Improv plays such a huge role in finding great lines - you'll be surprised at what comes out of your mind inadvertently. A lot of times it's better than a script you've worked out ahead of time.
Nick Swardson
#42. I was in choir in school. I kind of just did it. I already knew I wanted to sing. My music program in my school wasn't really great - people didn't really want to be part of the choir, they didn't want to do the plays and stuff like that. It definitely wasn't the cool thing to do.
Lea Michele
#43. The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it, from the Classics to modern plays, to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.
Michael York
#44. Every player that plays for any organization, having great fans on your side every night is a great thing.
Jim Thome
#45. I feel like my early experiences of acting, and I think a lot of other actors' too, are probably at camp or school plays where you get to have great range. At camp, I remember getting to play a 50-year-old man.
Matt McGorry
#46. I won't sit here and say I've never had a pimple, but I try to have a really great diet, you know, lots of vegetables and fish. And I think stress plays a huge part too.
Janelle Monae
#47. A lot of other bass players have told me I'm the only bass player who plays with a pick but sounds like he's playing with the thumb and fingers, which is a great compliment.
Glenn Hughes
#48. Seems like everybody has seen 'Cooley High.' That's what put me on the map. Garrett Morris and I go way back, even before the movie. Great guy. We've done theater and stage plays together, Lincoln Center and all kinds of things.
Glynn Turman
#49. All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.
Ray Winstone
#50. Shakespeare's plays were a great Teutonic Valhalla with brilliant sunshine at times and violent tempests at others. The world to him was a battlefield, but his sense of poetic justice, his sublime faith in life and its infinite resources, guided the battles.
Bjornstjerne Bjornson
#51. She's great company; she plays a mean hand of gin; and I like holding her hand almost as much as yours. What more do I need?
Libby Fischer Hellmann
#52. When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
Annette Bening
#53. A great many quite good plays could be performed with rhythmic howls in the place of dialogue and lose almost nothing by the change.
Rebecca West
#54. Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'
Edward Albee
#55. Great quarterbacks, good quarterbacks, make plays.
Fran Tarkenton
#56. I love a lot of these older actresses, like Cicely Tyson, who played Kunta Kinte's mother in 'Roots.' She was really great, and I like seeing her because every movie she plays, she plays a strong character. As a kid, she was really inspiring to me.
Keke Palmer
#57. 'Now I've tasted chocolate I'm not going back'. That's a great line. That's not me, that's all the writing. I mean it's like it doesn't matter who plays it, it's a great role. It's such a funny, tongue in cheek kind of great role.
Amanda Bynes
#58. MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior.
Carl Sagan
#59. A very dear friend of mine great actress named Wendy Rich Stetson was very active in the theater department at Amherst and I went to all the plays she was in, and it became very clear to me that what she was doing was something I wanted to be doing.
John Cariani
#61. I have noticed that in plays where the characters on stage laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very little.
Jean Kerr
#62. I have no great faith in women's plays. They always seem to me to lack precisely that which women lack, viz: testicles.
George H. Boker
#63. I started performing in high school. There was a pretty great drama department at my school, and that's when I started doing plays and musicals.
Missi Pyle
#64. You're going from audition to audition, changing in the backseat, and all that fun stuff that's great to do at one time in your life. That's when the 49-cent taco, as disgusting as it is, really plays into your day. It really helps you out.
Eva Mendes
#65. In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.
Elizabeth Ashley
#66. In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes.
Elizabeth Ashley
#67. Whether he gets hit early or in the middle or late, he gets in his seven innings it seems like every time. There are also great defensive plays made behind him and it's not a coincidence. Guys are in the game. He works quick.
Paul Konerko
#68. Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant, plain-spoken professor changed my life: It opened up the great questions; it put my petty problems into perspective. It got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me in the library late into the night.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#69. There's a great charm in theatre; I enjoyed doing it for twelve years and did lots of plays. At this chapter of my life, I am a cinema actor, and I would like to continue to be so, and at some point I would return to the theatre.
Boman Irani
#70. You could have a season where you hit .330 and did all these great things, but nothing ever materialized from it and you went home October One. Or you could hit .260 and have key hits and key plays on defense that help your team get to the playoffs and win the World Series.
Andre Ethier
#71. 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
#72. ...There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office. - Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost though lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind For which thou whipst her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
William Shakespeare
#73. Isn't the initial loss that does for him, but the stupid plays he makes in an effort to deny that the loss has happened. The great economic psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky summarised the behaviour in their classic analysis of the psychology of risk:
Tim Harford
#74. The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.
H.P. Lovecraft
#75. In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action.
George Pierce Baker
#76. We're kind of the comic relief of this movie because most of the stories are very dark. And that's why these plays were so great, because it's such a dark, dark universe that it becomes funny because it's just too pathetic.
Caroline Dhavernas
#77. So far you've been like ... a great secret."
A teasing smile plays at his lips. "A secret, huh? Well, if you think you've spent enough time saying goodbye you can go back inside and I'll just plan to meet you in your room. Unless, you know, you're done with me."
"I'm never done with you.
Katie Klein
#78. Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the
little ones: I can compare our rich misers to
nothing so fitly as to a whale; a' plays and
tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at
last devours them all at a mouthful:
William Shakespeare
#79. Too simple? An idea cannot be too simple. Simple is sometimes great, indeed. The Mahatma had a simple idea, although the British did not like it very much and put him in jail. Simple is good.
Ian B.G. Burns
#80. I began writing and became attached to writing at an early age. I began by writing poetry and experimenting with dialogues: modest plays, in other words. I also used to describe at great length the way people in the area lived.
Hassan Blasim
#81. Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician.
Wynton Marsalis
#82. I appreciate both ... for me, I think 'Star Wars' is more science fantasy and is based on a lot of great legendary heroes and morality plays and stuff. And 'Star Trek' is just pure fun. Pure science fun. And I've always appreciated both.
Ming-Na Wen
#83. It's funny, oftentimes the really great roles that I enjoy are in classic plays, and there aren't many theatres in New York who will do them, aside from Roundabout.
Laila Robins
#84. Places like the National Theatre or Sheffield, these great engines of theatre, make us cutting edge because they can be experimental. They can do plays that nobody else can afford to do in ways nobody else can afford to do.
Toby Stephens
#85. I'm a great believer in luck and the extraordinary role that plays in all of our lives.
Paul Newman
#86. A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
Wayne Gretzky
#87. It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people.
Phil Daniels
#88. Prayer and holiness are learned in a similar way as commitments are made, habits are formed and battles are fought against a real opponent (Satan, in this case), who with great cunning plays constantly on our weak spots.
J.I. Packer
#89. I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
Michael Emerson
#90. Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?
Edward Abbey
#91. I've known Shawn for several years. And he's just an amazing talent. He's a great writer, a marvelous, marvelous guitar player, and plays really good fiddle.
Guy Clark
#92. In spite of all evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day.
Salman Rushdie
#93. I think the stuff that plays on the radio, the majority of it is for teenagers, which is okay. That's what pop radio is about. And some of it is great, and some of it is not.
LL Cool J
#94. I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
Eugene Chadbourne
#95. I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom.
Winston Churchill
#96. A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#97. I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
Alan Lightman
#98. Better is the man of humble standing that works for himself than one who plays the great man but lacks bread.
Solomon
#99. My personal life is the same. At the end of the day, this is just a job. I love what I do, and it's a great job. But it's like my alter ego. There's Chris Brown the singer. And there's Christopher Brown, the down-home Tappahannock boy that plays video games and basketball and hangs out.
Chris Brown
#100. They [comic books] are not a genre, they are not something to get hot and cold from one year to the next, they're the exact same thing as books and plays: they are a source of great stories and colorful characters.
Michael Uslan
