You must create the character's internal life. What do I mean by internal life? I mean the thoughts, feelings, memories, and inner decisions that may not be spoken. When we look into the eyes of actors giving fully realized performances, we can see them thinking. We're interested in what they're experiencing that may never be spoken, that quality of nonverbal expression - which is as much a part of the characters as breathing and as real as what they say and do. This is their internal life. It helps us believe in the characters and care about them.

It's not enough to identify the Superobjective intellectually; you have to justify it, to find the emotional drive behind it. You need your own specific interpretation of the superobjective so that every time you think of it, it makes you emotional and drives you into action.

I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.

Everything I'm teaching you about acting has one aim only: to fire you up emotionally and behaviorally so that you can give a vivid, involving, and memorable performance.

Acting is a spiritual quest to touch human beings.

That's what our work can do: we remind people that things can change, that wounds can heal, that people can be forgiven, and that closed hearts can open again.

You can't play an emotional condition; you have an emotional condition, and because you have that condition, you try to overcome it with active doings (intentions).