Stage Curtains Quotes

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

There was a girl who used to hide behind the moon with her legs bent against it like tiny fishhooks, as if she were the only thing keeping all that grey from tilting on it's orbit and grazing against the skin of the Earth. The stars left tiny burn marks on her skin that sizzled when she touched them so that she sounded like raindrops in summer when she walked. The stars fell on her back so often it wore away in the shape of a fin. She bathed in the white moonlight and it made her skin more pale so her eyes looked wider. Her eyes were so wide that she could take much more in as she watched earth like the clouds over it were stage curtains being drawn back. Ta-da-do-rah! And then at the end the people cried and their tears fell from the earth and into the craters making pools for her fishhook legs to catch their stories in. One letter at a time falling away into the velvet black backdrop curtain before she could hold them. And the people sighed, mouths all open wide, people always cry at endings. ~ KI

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization. ~ Noam Chomsky

I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old. ~ Alan Alda

I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs. ~ Ricky Jay

If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse. ~ Criss Jami

I talked about everything, man. I've always written material that everyone can laugh at. I talked about growing up. I did a lot of physical comedy. That was my thing. I was a physical comedian. I did anything and everything from running on a treadmill, I can paint a picture on stage of anything. ~ J. B. Smoove

I always feel like if someone has stage fright, I really try and say, "Listen, these people want you to succeed, they want to have a good evening. They want to see something really great. They don't want to see something crappy. They don't. They want to be at something really special." ~ Laurie Anderson

T.V.'s weird because it's both the greatest gig as an actor potentially because it can be all this work for all this time, but there are so many question marks at every stage of the process. ~ Caitlin Fitzgerald

So, Cameron," Steph continued, "auditions for the school play are next week. You should come. We need more males of the species to try out."
"Not my thing," Cameron said.
"okay, so you don't want to be onstage. You could be backstage."
"With Jenna," Gil said helpfully. "She's the stage manager-"
Ethan talked over Gil. "But if it's not our thing," he said, "it's not your thing. You don't even have to have a thing if you don't want."
"Right," Katy said, "no thing required."
Cameron didn't respond, didn't even act like anyone was waiting for him to say anything. He just ate his lunch, scooping spaghetti onto a piece of bread and folding the bread over into a sort of sandwich before putting it in his mouth. I was fascinated by the most mundane little details of him-how he held his paper napkin in his left hand while he ate with his right, the space he took up when both his elbows were on the table.
I was suddenly aware that I'd been staring at him, and everyone else at the table was staring at me. They were all done with their lunches. I wondered how much time had passed.
"Um," Katy said to me, "are you all right?"
Steph caught my eye and smiled slowly.
"Oh,yeah." I concentrated on my half sandwich trying to think of something witty to say, but I was in total Jennifer Harris territory now, spacing out and forgetting how to make simple conversation.
Cameron picked up his empty tray. "Nice to meet you all. See you later." He li ~ Sara Zarr

I'm going through a stage where the dumbest things make me bawl. I feel like I need to see a shrink. ~ Taye Diggs

Certain portions of the earth, escaping utter destruction, become the seedbeds for replenishing the human race, and so it happens that on a world that is not young there are young populations having no culture, whose traditions were swept away in a debacle; they wander over the earth and gradually put aside the roughness of a nomadic existence and by natural inclunation submit to communities and associations; their mode of living is at first simple, knowking no guile and strange to cunning, called in its early stage the Golden Age. [16] The more these populations progress in civilization and employment of the arts, the more easily does the spirit of rivalry creep in, at first commendable but imperceptibly changing to envy; this, then, is responsible for all the tribulations that the race suffers in subsequent ages. So much for the vicissitudes that civilizations experience, of perishing and arising again, as the world goes on unchanged.
[Chapter X - 15,16] ~ Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius

The fact that man never is satisfied with any stage of his finite development, the fact that nothing finite can hold him, although finitude is his destiny, indicates the indissoluble relation of everything finite to being-itself. ~ Paul Tillich

I wanted to be Anthony Hopkins and ended up being neither a film star nor having a career on the stage. ~ Dirk Benedict

It's easier to direct. If you direct something poorly and re-shoot it the next day, stage it better, make it work better, you have a lot of possibilities. You can edit it in certain ways so that it works, but there's no getting around weaknesses of the script. ~ Woody Allen

If I had a religion, its deity would be Audysseus, the sound God, and He would be a vengeful god, dishing out eternal damnation to people with cheap stage monitors. ~ Tim Minchin

I really like Caravan Palace's electro swing stuff. They incorporate the electronic, but when you see them live, they're all on stage playing live music. They're all playing their instruments. They drop these beats with the DJs that are so incredible. ~ Drake Bell

I knocked part of my tooth out with a scrubbing brush on stage whilst singing 'Hard Knock Life' in Annie. ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It's not the world that's the stage - it's social media, where you're trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online. ~ Lauren Beukes

I've been really, really blessed. I got to perform on stage with Bob Dylan. I've gotten to sing with Mick Jagger. ~ Sheryl Crow

The mind is at every stage a theater of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, how so ever different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply removing portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monoto ~ William James

You have to refine your being. You have to go through all of the stages and steps of erasing yourself through service to others with purity, humility, integrity. ~ Frederick Lenz

darkened like a stage set. The senet game began ~ Rick Riordan

When you are spending time in front of the television, you are not doing other things. The young child of three or four years old is in the stage of the greatest emotional development that human beings undergo. And we only develop when we experience things, real-life things: a conversation with Mother, touching Father, going places, doing things, relating to others. This kind of experience is critical to a young child, and when the child spends thirty-five hours per week in front of the TV set, it is impossible to have the full range of real-life experience that a young child must have. ~ Jerry Mander

I love the stage. It's terrifying in a way that film and television is not. When you're about to go out, and you're adrenaline just gets out of control, and that can be really daunting. ~ Stephen Lang

Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

After being maligned for his lack of offense for much of his career, [César] Gerónimo batted .280 with two home runs, a triple, three runs, and three RBIs vs. Boston during the 1975 World Series, and then he batted .308 with two doubles, two steals, and three runs vs. New York during the 1976 World Series. The man who's defense Sparky Anderson called 'ungodly' became an offensive star on baseball's biggest stage. ~ Tucker Elliot

There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too. ~ Peggy Noonan

She talks about me like I'm a rug that clashes with every room in the house. Like a cat that won't stop clawing at the curtains. She talks about me like she has buyer's remorse. ~ Katie Henry

Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches. ~ Jenna Bush

I mean, the paradox is that whereas the screen, it seems to me - the cinema can absorb endless amounts of music, it cannot really with comfort absorb large amounts of words. Not nearly as many words, that is to say, as a stage can. ~ Bob Mondello

You coming or not?" he repeated impatiently.
I was going to say no. But then, glancing at the curtains, I thought, it's probably no more spooky out there in that cemetery than it is here in my own bedroom! ~ R.L. Stine

I'm going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict. In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves. ~ Doris Lessing

Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city. ~ Alan Rickman

My father wanted me to play pro football, and he didn't like the fact that I'd left school. And he said, It takes a man to play football. And any fool can go up on the stage and make an ass of himself. ~ Bill Cosby

The Conclusion


NOW Reader, I have told my Dream to thee;
See if thou can'st interpret it to me,
Or to thyself, or Neighbor; but take heed
Of mis-interpreting; for that, instead
Of doing good, will but thyself abuse: 5
By mis-interpreting, evil ensues.

Take heed also, that thou be not extreme,
In playing with the out-side of my Dream:
Nor let my figure or similitude
Put thee into a laughter or a feud; 10
Leave this for Boys and Fools; but as for thee,
Do thou the substance of my matter see.

Put by the Curtains, look within my Vail;
Turn up my Metaphors, and do not fail
There, if thou seekest them, such things to find 15
As will be helpful to an honest mind.

What of my dross thou findest there, be bold
To throw away, but yet preserve the Gold;
What if my Gold be wrapped up in Ore?
None throws away the Apple for the Core. 20
But if thou shalt cast away all as vain,
I know not but 'twill make me Dream again ~ John Bunyan

Rejecting the rules of late-stage tech-bubble venture-capital madness is a better, more resilient, and durable approach to business in a digital landscape. Who better to affirm this than one of the digital industry's most trusted news and analysis sources, PandoDaily. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff. ~ Ron White

The audience will make you feel like a demigod. But when you leave the stage, get back to being human. ~ David Coverdale

As far as my street cred goes, I'll always have that, because I always hang with the kids. I'll jump right off the stage and buy them a beer. I'll be a star on stage, but I'll always hang with the kids. ~ Kid Rock