Acting is happy agony.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Alec Guinness

Ava Gardner

Acting is all about honesty.
If you can fake that, you've got it made.

We're
shy exhibitionists.

George Burns

Geena Davis, on actors

The best screen actor is the man
who can do nothing extremely well.

Alfred Hitchcock

The applause of silence.
is the only kind that counts.

It takes twenty years to
make an overnight success.

Alfred Jarry

Eddie Cantor

You can make a killing in the theater, but not a living.

Robert Anderson

Acting provides the fulfillment
of never being fulfilled.

Comedy is simply a funny way
of being serious.

Glenda Jackson

Peter Ustinov

Black and white are the most ravishing
colors of all in film.

Penelope Gilliatt

Opening night:
the night before the play is ready to open.

George Jean Nathan

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert C. Benchley

A writer is somebody for whom
writing is more difficult than
it is for other people.

I love being a writer.
What I hate is the paperwork.

Thomas Mann

Peter De Vries

I don't think I am any good.
If I thought I was any good,
I wouldn't be.

We are all failures—
at least, all the best of us are.

John Betjeman

J. M. Barrie, on writers

Be obscure clearly.

E. B. White, advice to writers

A good novel is possible only
after one has given up and let go.

If it sounds like writing,
I re-write it.

Walker Percy

Elmore Leonard

It takes less time to
learn how to write nobly.
than how to write
lightly and straightforwardly.

Writing came easy—
it would only get hard
when I got better at it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Gary Wills

Writing is easy;
all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper
until the drops of blood form on your forehead.

Gene Fowler