The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
Maggie Smith

The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep.
Elia Kazan

Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie.
Gene Tierney

I left it for seven years before going back on stage. I know now not to leave it so long.
Ewan McGregor

I love to play; a stage is a safe place for me to be. It's not that way for most folks, but I'd be lost without it.
Rick Danko

Some stage directions you just simply have to throw away.
Judd Hirsch

America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
Claire Wolfe

On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.
Theodore Bikel

I mean, I guess I realized subconsciously that this is what I should be doing before I realized it, consciously. Verbally, I don't think I had committed to it, even though I was driving everywhere, every night, just trying to get on stage.
Todd Barry

When I came back to power, Georgia was completely isolated on the international stage.
Eduard Shevardnadze

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage.
Cab Calloway

On the stage, you alone hold the key, and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.
Greta Scacchi

People come up to me as I leave the stage after a performance and tell me tey saw my mother onstage with me every time I sing. I keep a sense of humor about it.
Lorna Luft

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.
Anne Tyler

I was on stage and I was like I will pay someone to do my time, not only will I expect NOT to be paid, but I will pay someone if I can run off stage right now. It was so bad.
Julia Sweeney

I love living on that stage. Without that, I'd die.
Celia Cruz

I'd do pretty much anything to get back on stage. I'd like to develop a new musical. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard that they're developing John Waters' Cry-Baby because that is so amazing and super and wonderful and I wish that I could be involved. But it's not the right time and I understand that. But I hear things like that and I get that little tingle in my stomach.
Kristen Bell

I mean, I guess I started during the comedy boom, so it was literally like, on Sunday you could decide you wanted to be a comic, and on Monday, you could be on stage.
Todd Barry

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.
Ethel Merman

John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.
Ben Kingsley