The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakspere [sic], and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul.

...an actor is exactly as big as his imagination.

People whose understanding and taste in literature, painting, and music are beyond question are, for the most part, ignorant of what is good or bad art in the theater.

This...is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism.

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, somethingyou can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places.

I suppose that Paderewski can play superbly, if not quite at his best, while his thoughts wander to the other end of the world, orpossibly busy themselves with a computation of the receipts as he gazes out across the auditorium. I know a great actor, a master technician, can let his thoughts play truant from the scene.

Be reflective...and stay away from the theater as much as you can. Stay out of the theatrical world, out of its petty interests, its inbreeding tendencies, its stifling atmosphere, its corroding influence. Once become