Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing.

A playwright... is... the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about.

I would be twenty before I learned how to be fifteen, thirty before I knew what it meant to be twenty, and now at seventy-two I have to stop myself from thinking like a man of fifty who has plenty of time ahead.

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.

They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."

It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.

The need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star.