I believe in the theater; I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size.

I don’t know what is better than the work that is given to the actor – to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are – politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.

Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.

If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.

[the only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?

I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than...

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the...

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

My dear boy, why don’t you try acting? (on the set of ‘Marathon Man’, to Dustin Hoffman, who had announced that he’d gone 3 days without sleep in order to ‘become’ his character

If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life- it’s an exhalation...

It’s just like a nursery game of make-believe.

I like Paris. My problem is I don’t like Parisians.”

Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.