The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.

I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

The worst crime is faking it.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.