Joel Grey Quotes
-
The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.
-
All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.
-
Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.
-
For a few years, there were three shows running on Broadway that I had all opened: 'Chicago,' 'Wicked' and 'Anything Goes.'
-
I'd like to direct something at the Public.
-
When I met Jo Wilder, I fell crazy in love and never thought about homosexuality. And I thought, 'Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is life.'
-
I'm about possibilities and about surprises and the life force.
-
I love that moment just before the curtain goes up, whether I'm sitting in the audience or standing backstage. It's full of expectation. It's a thrill that's unequaled anywhere.
-
When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.
-
I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.
-
I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.
-
The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.
-
Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.
-
I think there is a lot of loss in being a professional child actor. All of a sudden, you start to want to be an adult at the age of 8 or 9. I never did kid stuff, so to speak, so I was in many ways ostracized by the other kids. But I did get this other life, so it was a trade-off.
-
After my bar mitzvah, I started to assimilate, to really not pay attention to my roots. The anti-Semitic experiences of my youth had been very painful. You try to put all that in the past and become a person of the world. I think that's the right thing to do. But it's not right to leave out who you really are. That's a tragedy.
-
I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.
-
I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.
-
I was small growing up, and to make matters worse, I wore glasses, and my mother dressed me in attention-getting outfits. I was a target of bullies.
-
I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.
-
If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.
-
I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.
-
The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.
-
My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.
-
When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.