Charles Durning (Charles Edward Durning) Quotes
Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow.
Quotes to Explore
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I'd love to work with David Lynch. I'm such a big fan. He's a genius.
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My dad was pretty strict. We didn't even get to watch any of his movies until I was, like, 17 years old. I didn't even see his stand-up, really, until I started doing stand-up, and that was when I was 22. So he's pretty strict. We had curfews until I was 17... he didn't play around.
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Going to rehearsals of school plays got me out of science. It became clear what inspired me and what dampened my spirit. The only other thing I could do at school was trampolining - it didn't seem to have much future in it.
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I do love pasta. It gets me into trouble. If I could give up pasta and bread, I'd look like Cate Blanchett.
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I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.
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I think everyone is forgetting what plastic surgery is for - if you have a face-eating tumour, lose a breast or are involved in a car accident, then it's a good idea.
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I took religion much too seriously, however, and its overall effect was depressing. I would have really liked to discard it, but somehow I couldn't.
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Some people can be choosy because they're ultratalented or lucky or whatever, but yeah, there are certain things that might not be the greatest thing on my resume. But I don't sit back and go, 'Gosh, I wish I didn't do that.' It's all part of the growth of a career, whether you're an entertainer or a librarian.
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A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.
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And I think there is too much bloviating around from politicians.
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A lot of American playwrights seem to have a career as a playwright. I don't consider it a career at all.
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After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
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There weren't really any visible men in my family when I was growing up, but of course there have been men in my life, wonderful men.
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Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.
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I think all musicians have at one time or another experienced one physical problem or another. I have had tendinitis a couple of times, so I try to be really careful. It takes patience and persistence to overcome injury.
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I think when you're a TV presenter, you have to have a reason for doing it, and a lot of them have been around a long time and grafted for that. The reason why it works with me on 'The Xtra Factor' is because I was a contestant on it, and I have a relationship with the viewers at home.
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To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.
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I have no regrets.
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The financial crisis in our country is not a passing storm. Given the size of the problems, our national effort will not be completed in 2012. It will take many years and will require the efforts and insistence of several governments.
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I never saw 'Titanic' as a springboard for bigger films or bigger pay cheques. I knew it could have been that, but I knew it would have destroyed me.
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I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.
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It's quite rare that you find something that you can quite literally have an absolute ball doing, as well as the tough stuff and the difficult stuff and the pain.
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You can never be fully human unless you've discovered the humanity in other human beings. Don't close your eyes to the injustices of your own country by trying to solve the injustices of another country. That's an evasion of Christian responsibility.
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Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow.
