Virginia Woolf Quotes
My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?
Quotes to Explore
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I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.
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I want to entertain people, but with some substance.
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It was just such a demeaning thing to do, being in silent movies. They'd call you up and tell you, 'Hey, jump off this building!' and they'd give you a hundred bucks, and you'd do it.
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The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.
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A zeal for the defence of their country led these heroes to the scene of action, though with a few men to attack a powerful army of experienced warriors.
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Only a few good leaders have paused to reflect seriously on being leaders.
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Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
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Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.
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I'm very involved in the writing on every level.
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I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.
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We all go to the theater and cinema to be inspired and moved on an emotional level, sometimes to laughter, sometimes to tears. Once I discovered that acting could have such an effect, I was sold. It has been one of the most rewarding discoveries I have ever made.
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When I remember my life in Russia it is in totally dark colours.
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These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.
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Pain is never permanent.
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I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.
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Wanted: a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living.
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We sat down and read it for the first time and I thanked God under my breath, because they were all so good. And my leading ladies are both exceptional. I mean, everybody in the play. I could just go on all night about them.
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You could give the best audition ever and not get the role or not get a callback because you just weren't what they were looking for.
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We are not the originators of the story. I think it's actually the opposite when you're an actor. You're telling somebody else's story.
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We too, through lack of knowledge and of sufficiently mature reflection, mistook the visible outward appearance of the phenomenon for the phenomenon itself.
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I want to explore the world properly, to be able to write about and take pictures of all kinds of different cultures. Just be an explorer or adventurer. I also love extreme sports.
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I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel thing.
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And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.
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My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?
