Top 100 The Curtain Quotes
#1. I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.
David Knopfler
#2. You like? she asked Slade. He gave her a head nod and she vanished behind the curtain.
That's my sister, he said, pointing at the closed curtain.
I shrugged. I'm glad you guys are so close.
Holly Hood
#3. Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.
Enoch Powell
#4. In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#5. The easiest way to have a peek behind the curtain is to learn from those that are ahead of you.
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
#6. The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15.
Robert Caro
#9. Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, comedy, farce, or tragedy, by a dramatis personae, the 'self', and so it will be until the curtain drops.
Charles Scott Sherrington
#10. Remove the Curtain of your Heart and see the Beloved sitting inside yourself. Close your Ears to the Outside and hear the Cosmic Sound going on within you.
Intro to Part 2, Chapter 1. Credit given to Mira, poet-saint of Rajastan.
Deborah Moggach
#11. Ideas are God pulling up the frame of the curtain to show us what can be.
Bidemi Mark-Mordi
#12. You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people's interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain.
Jay Roach
#13. Lila backed away toward the curtain. "Do you just... stand here until I need you?"
The woman smiled and dug a volume from a pocket. "I have a book."
"Let me guess, a religious text?"
"Actually," said Ister, perching on the low couch, "it's about pirates."
Lila smiled.
V.E Schwab
#14. We think we know people. We think that what we see is all there is. We rarely ask ourselves what goes on behind the curtain. We jump to conclusions. And we take everything very personally.
Amanda Filipacchi
#15. People look at me and go, 'You must have it made. You have girls. You have a great life.' It's not true. I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.
John Stamos
#16. Oh, God, I though, this is like two people in a play, in a moment the curtain will come down, we shall bow to the audience, and go off to our dressing-rooms.
Daphne Du Maurier
#17. I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.
Pablo Picasso
#18. Romantic haste in drama brings
tears and sighs when the hero dies
but the curtain fall is final
when in life we take the tragic way
The sunset too is a glorious thing
but with it ends the day.
C. P. Klapper
#19. He let the curtain drop and the terrible light that had played on his features went off to play somewhere more healthy.
Douglas Adams
#20. The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter's bell
A moment yet the actor stops
And looks around to say farewell.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#21. Out- out are the lights- out all! And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Edgar Allan Poe
#22. When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.
Cornelia Funke
#23. When the curtain rises, the only thing that speaks is courage.
Maria Callas
#24. There is a design working behind the curtain of the stars, and we are fulfilling it, drawn toward the future on the tide of time, toward our destiny as the first settlers of a new world.
The room was still. He has them, she thought.
Amy Kathleen Ryan
#25. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way are revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless. Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets.
George Washington Carver
#26. You can be inspired by the mysteries of great dreams. But to achieve them, you must pull back the curtain and do the unimpressive work that gets you there.
Ben Arment
#27. Nothing feeds the center of being so much as creative work. The curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#28. Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain
Doug Horton
#29. I woke with a terrible headache and wobbled around 'till I fell out the window."
"You what?"
"Fell out the window. That one over there." She [Edwina] gestured to the curtain behind her. "I broke my back. My spine is all wobbly now, but it doesn't hurt.
Megan Whalen Turner
#30. In economy, invisible hand is a set of wealthy men.
It's the puppeteer who's in charge behind the curtain.
Toba Beta
#31. Yes, the show must go on, but it's also important to survive until the curtain calls.
Marshall Thornton
#32. For a moment man is a boy, for a moment a lovesick youth, for a moment bereft of wealth, for a moment in the height of prosperity; then at life's end with limbs worn out by old age and wrinkles adorning his face, like an actor he retires behind the curtain of death.
Bhartrhari
#33. That's what you do when the curtain is falling
you give the line that the audience wants to hear.
Rick Yancey
#34. Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.
Henry David Thoreau
#35. You're going to get violated in that ring. I am going to close the curtain on the joke that is the Audley Harrison show.
David Haye
#36. My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn.
Chuck Palahniuk
#38. When night draws back the curtain,
And pins it with a star,
Remember you are still my friend,
Though you may wander far
Betty Smith
#39. Realise this: one day your soul
will depart from your body and you will
be drawn behind the curtain that floats between us
and the unknown. While you wait for that moment, be happy,
because you don't know where you came from and
you don't know where you will be going.
Omar Khayyam
#40. Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no applause.
Charlie Chaplin
#41. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
L. Frank Baum
#42. A pure-hearted rips the curtain of reality.
Toba Beta
#43. We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday's films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.
Daphne Du Maurier
#44. The curtain has just come down on childhood
Mitch Albom
#45. I've done three Broadway shows; once the curtain goes up, that's it. I mean, you prepare and you rehearse like crazy, but after opening night, the director's not there anymore, you know. He gives you notes during previews after each performance, but opening night, you're on your own.
Dennis Christopher
#46. Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.
Sarah Bernhardt
#48. The evening breeze floated through the open window over my desk, waltzing the curtain from side to side.
Ruta Sepetys
#49. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Anonymous
#50. It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.
Josh Hartnett
#51. I hop onto the stage and joke-sing: "The Phaaaanntom of the Opera is there, innnnnside your mind." I attack the curtain with a flourish and sing on, "innnnside your mind.
Anne Eliot
#52. I don't know what is behind the curtain; only that I need to find out.
Richard Paul Evans
#53. I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer.
Anne Enright
#54. illusions, so many masks and facades. All the world's a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.
William Ritter
#55. That's kind of fuse for the show - those first 10-15 seconds you're onstage. The curtain drops and you see the crowd for the first time and they see you for the first time. The response and the energy that's going on right there - to me, that sets the tone for the rest of the night.
Jason Aldean
#56. I am going to seek a great purpose, draw the curtain, the farce is played.
Francois Rabelais
#57. Normally we'd draw the curtain here, but I just wanted to see what he'd play next.
Bobby Fischer
#58. Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was?
Linda Colley
#59. Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it. This seldom happens. Readers who dare to point out that incomprehensible writing can't be comprehended risk being told that the problem is theirs.
Ralph Keyes
#60. They do not need the sun. Who needs the sun when the eyes glow? Darkness. A woolen fog has wrapped the earth, has dropped a heavy curtain. From far away, from beyond the curtain, comes the sound of drops falling on stone. Far, far away - the autumn, people, tomorrow. ("The North")
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#61. I always feel that there is a curtain, you know, that if I could just peek behind the curtain I'd see how the world really works. And since I haven't had it I have to write about it instead.
Charles De Lint
#62. As a teenager I had never been able to accept the fact of having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time I had been seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#63. Other artists - poets, painters, sculptors, musicians - produce something which lives after them and enshrines their memories in positive evidences of their divine mission; but we, - we strut and fret our hour upon the stage, and then the curtain falls and all is darkness and silence.
Charlotte Saunders Cushman
#64. Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with
Anonymous
#65. Do me a favor this morning. Draw the curtain and come back to bed.
Forget the coffee. We'll pretend
we're in a foreign country, and in love.
Raymond Carver
#66. Because that's what you do when the curtain is falling, you say the line the audience wants to hear.
Rick Yancey
#67. The breeze and the dew make tranquil the clear dawn;
Behind the curtain there is one who alone is up betimes.
The orioles sing and the flowers smile -
Whose then, after all, is the Spring?
Li Shangyin
#68. Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
William Butler Yeats
#69. I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.
Suzanne Farrell
#70. I used to love reading, but since I've started writing, it's harder for me to immerse, because I spend so much time looking at how the story is structured and trying to see what the author is doing behind the curtain.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#71. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it's tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes.
Ian McEwan
#72. Life has dazzling beauty. To see it, open the window of the mind and remove the curtain of conformity.
Debasish Mridha
#73. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.
Frank Herbert
#74. If all you were left believing was what you were seeing, it'd be nothing but desperate. To have hope, you're going to have to imagine that there's something behind the curtain.
Jakob Dylan
#75. We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, 'Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?'
Micheal Mac Liammoir
#76. We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves.
Herman Wouk
#77. There are two sighs of relief every night in the life of an opera manager. The first comes when the curtain goes up The second sigh of relief comes when the final curtain goes down without any disaster, and one realizes, gratefully, that the miracle has happened again.
Rudolf Bing
#79. So many people are so good at so many things. Right now I'm lucky we're supposed to smile during the curtain call, because I'm so happy this is the thing I'm good at.
Amy Spalding
#80. For pilots sometimes see behind the curtain, behind the veil of gossamer velvet, and find the truth behind man, the force behind a universe.
Richard Bach
#81. The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost.
Emile M. Cioran
#82. It's strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn't even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s.
Jeff Dunham
#83. Dylan, while he is in the shower and he and Joss are only seperated by the curtain and his invisibility:
Dylan: "Maybe if you would come in here and scrub my back it would speed things up."
Joss: "I'm not invisible."
Dylan: "I know this.
Susan Bischoff
#84. Small boys often produce their own plays; but usually the parts are not written out. They hardly need to be, for the main line of each character is always "Stick 'em up!" In these plays the curtain is always rung down on a set of corpses, for small boys are by nature through and uncompromising.
A.S. Neill
#85. But Nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it, and must play it till the curtain falls.
Edwin Booth
#86. I step in then close the curtain as she eases her jeans past her underwear. If Echo kisses me, touches me, shit, looks at me the right way, I'll lose my fucking mind.
Katie McGarry
#87. And now, having endeavoured to suit everyone by many weddings, few deaths, and as much prosperity as the eternal fitness of things will permit, let the music stop, the lights die out, and the curtain fall for ever on the March family.
Louisa May Alcott
#88. Besides what endless brawls by wives are bred,
The curtain lecture makes a mournful bed.
Juvenal
#89. The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.
Woody Allen
#90. Funny is not a color. Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone.
Flip Wilson
#92. Old Year! upon the Stage of Time You stand to bow your last adieu; A moment, and the prompter's chime Will ring the curtain down on you.
Robert W. Service
#93. I remember when I was doing 'The Crucible' on Broadway with Laura Linney, and Arthur Miller had been in rehearsal with us and was on stage on opening night. She turned to me during the curtain call and said, 'Let's make sure we remember this.'
John Benjamin Hickey
#94. I'll give you my worst nightmare. I'm dreaming that I'm onstage, the curtain goes up, and I have no idea what my lines are or what's going on. I think I should know, I kind of know, I remember rehearsing ... and the audience is there waiting.
Jackie Earle Haley
#95. For many of us, the curtain had just come down on childhood.
Mitch Albom
#96. Poetry! Indeed, verses are the only thing that your letter lacks, Makar Alexievitch. And what tender feelings I can read in it - what roseate-coloured fancies! To the curtain, however, I had never given a thought. The fact is that when I moved the flower-pots, it LOOPED ITSELF up. There now!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#97. Where were we?" she said.
"Getting credit," I said.
"What about it?"
"Well, it's nice to get credit."
The spokes of her rear wheel spun behind the curtain of her long skirt. She looked like a photograph from a hundred years ago. She turned her wide eyes on me. "Is it?" she said.
Jerry Spinelli
#98. I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.
Mike White
#99. Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled.
Neil Gaiman
#100. The idea that the curtain rises on what is often more or less a happy scene, and it will fall just a few hours later, and everyone will be dead or have gone mad ... I find that kind of narrative very appealing.
Daniel Handler
