If you really want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.
—Dorothy Sarnoff (1914–2008) American Opera Singer, Speech Consultant
And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. I wish him well!
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.
—John Cage (1912–92) American Composer
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. [You must] reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.
—Jack Lemmon (1925–2001) American Actor, Musician
The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
The program is nearly over! I can feel the audience is still with me but if I run faster I can shake them off
—Bob Hope (1903–2003) British-born American Comedian
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his audience
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer’s body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
The only way to win audiences is to tell people about the life and death of Christ. Every other approach is a waste.
—Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) American Catholic Theologian
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you’ve got an audience.
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one’s hand.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.
—Laurence Olivier (1907–89) English Actor, Producer, Director
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
There are three things to aim at in public speaking; first to get into your subject, then to get your subject into yourself, and lastly, to get your subject into your hearers.
—Alexander Gregg (1819–93) American Episcopal Bishop
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
—George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-Up Comedian
When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written.
—Stephen Sondheim (b.1930) American Musician, Composer, Songwriter
My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.
—Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) American Politician
You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.
—Meryl Streep (b.1949) American Actor
Don’t be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also
—Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American Filmmaker
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