Stella Adler Quotes - Page 2

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.

It's not important to know who you are. It's important to know what you do, and then to do it like hercules!

When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.

The play is not in the words, it’s in you!

An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.

Tell yourself that the world is outside, that it's not to be hidden from you, that you are going to thrust yourself forward and be relaxed in the world. You have chosen a field where you're going to be hurt to the blood. But to retreat from the pain is death

The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.

In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit.

No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.

Today the influences of your society pressure you to be successful before your time. They are pulling you down. They have pulled you down, you big, sweet, magnificent, young, potential artists. They have pulled you down so far that you are on the verge of destruction. Only you don't know it because you want to be a success

The theatre-acting, creating, interpreting - means total involvement, the totality of heart, mind and spirit.

The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.

Our heritage as actors goes back thousands of years, and we have to feel as comfortable in the clothes, and the language of Sophocles as we do in our sneakers.

The actor must be full of passion. If he's too cool he's better off as the manager of a company, not someone who appears on the stage.

By taking elements you observe in life, you can develop qualities in your acting life that you don't ordinarily call upon in your personal life.

The ultimate aim of the training is to create an actor who can be responsible for his artistic development and achievement.

Life in the theatre isn't necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn't when you sign a contract. It isn't even when you are in a play. It's when you understand it. If you understand it, you'll know why you want to act.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place.

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.

If you can't take both sides, it means you can only play yourself.

I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.