Abbie > Abbie's Quotes

“Overcome the notion that we must be regular; it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary.”
― Uta Hagen

“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I... I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more...never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is... It was death. I chose life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one’s own experience and sensations, to make one’s self heard and seen. Talent alone is not enough. Character and ethics, a point of view about the world in which you live and an education, can and must be acquired and developed.”
― Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting

“Actors create a sense of life not by manipulating experiences, but by experiencing the action as it occurs. They are in the "here and now," a state where concentration on the details of the moment preclude the distractions of the past or future. In this sense they have a great deal in common with those other "players," athletes.”
― Kurt Daw, Acting: Thought Into Action

“Acting is creating a sense of life. It is giving an audience an experience so vivid and truthful that they are able to draw their own conclusions about what it all means.”
― Kurt Daw, Acting: Thought Into Action

“Acting is very subjective. Its essence is experience. It is almost impossible to learn from simple observation, because a great performance is marked by the appearance of spontaneous creation: the artistry that created it is concealed.”
― Kurt Daw, Acting: Thought Into Action

“The words on the page are only clues to the life boiling underneath them.”
― Zelda Fitchandler

“Smell was our first sense, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from our olfactory stalks. We think because we smelled.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“If I had to answer the question, What is the most important ability for the actor? . . . the answer would emphatically be listening. Lest there be some misunderstanding, let me define what I mean by listening. I am talking about listening with all the senses.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”
― Elizabeth Peters

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

“Forget about weak or strong, aggressive or passive. There are no passive characters, there are no weak ones. There is winning and there is losing, but every actor must fight for something he wants and needs. If you are concerned about getting what you need, then you will never let preconceived judgments get in your way.”
― Michael Shurtleff, Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part

“We don't turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.”
― Lisa Cron, Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel

“Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Stories are about people who are uncomfortable.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Outlining the plot before you develop your protagonist traps you on the surface of your novel—that is, in the external events that happen.”
― Lisa Cron, Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel

“We think in story. It’s hardwired in our brain. It’s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“If you don't know what the objective is, everything appears random.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Because the story, as I’m very fond of saying, is in the specifics.”
― Lisa Cron, Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel