Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst. There the students learn how to be natural - that is, they flop around, pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as "method acting." How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfillment? No, I don't want to waste my time with these arrogant morons.

I honestly believe that drink is the greatest curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that it has driven more young men to ruin than anything except civil service examinations. <small>p. 78</small>

I always tell my students that I’m teaching them to be more confident. That’s why you come to acting class. I say, “If you aim at a tall tree, you may hit a bush. If you aim at a bush, you’ll hit that floor.” I find that some actors just don’t try enough. They may not like it when I say that.

Acting was not about money back then. Now people just go to acting schools without the love but the eagerness to be famous and have a lot of money

[T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself."

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Though the ancient world understood that work was a curse, modern industrial society spreads its gospel. The working class, Lafargue hopelessly hoped, must reject the work fetish.

Speaking from the viewpoint of an educator, I might mention that acting in all countries and with all races reflects and expresses to some extent the quality of life. Acting follows the drama by necessity, realistic actors for the realistic drama. And we have here in our country fine acting and good actors in plays written and cast to their type, but as for so-called 'stylized' acting, we have almost none at all. This is largely due to the fact that we are not trained in acting in the classics or in the eighteenth century drama. Perhaps the reason we have not had more Shakespeare revivals is that it is difficult to find actors sufficiently trained and capable.

She may have been right. Looking back, I suppose I was expecting, as a young actor, to discuss Stanislavski or 'Acting as an art.' Instead, I palled around with the crew—the grips, the stagehands—and the conversation centered around the two B's—broads and booze.

Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas.

[About on-set tutoring:] It's hard to be the class clown in a class of one.

I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education.

What an education follows! It is really a fine comedy, though the players rarely know it. I am but a clumsy performer myself, and have to confess to incurable defects of training, so that I sometimes wonder I have not been hissed off the stage; still I have seen the performance through more than once or twice, and know something about it. Such tender and delicate adjustments and readjustments of convictions to keep the party balance sure! Such abundance of spoonmeat on the one hand, and such careful economy on the other of truths that may prove too strong for weak digestions! Such avowals of readiness to consider seriously any opinion, however obviously absurd, broached by a possible supporter! Such prompt denunciations of all the devices of an irreconcilable opponent!