Competition [in a scene] is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors.

The actor needs to find out what the basic fight is in every character in every scene.

Take nothing for granted. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in every scene. Ask yourself: What is new?

Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake.

No matter how much we know about the other person, there is always something going on in that other heart and that other head that we don't know but can only ponder. And no matter how we explain ourselves to someone else, no matter how open we are, there is always still something inexplicable, something hidden and unknown in us, too.

There's only one reason why a character drinks: to seek confrontation. To fight for what they want in ways normally denied them.

If we lived for reality, we'd be dead, every last one of us. Only dreams keep us going.