“If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.”

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!

Too few is as many as too many.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don’t get young men standing up and saying, ‘How can I combine career and family?’

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.

Each generation has something different at which they are all looking.

If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk up hill the ground is nearer.

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.

there are the two sides to a Frenchman, logic and fashion and that is the reason why French people are exciting and peaceful. Logic and fashion.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

How many people in other professions would be willing to have their job performances evaluated that way, in front of millions, every afternoon at five o’clock.

He must be prepared to work at his game. He must never be satisfied with his last performance, and he must hate losing.

I started out as a very traditional actor. The first thing I ever did in terms of performance was singing.

I stressed the fact that today’s performance could be the most important of their life. Yesterday’s performance was already history.

If I had money, I would like to get an old building, have music performances, do lithographs, have shows of paintings, and do those things that I’m interested in doing.

A screen actor is compensated in the knowledge that millions will see his performance at one time, where only hundreds will see it on the stage.

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.

I was very sick, with chills and sweats, but against my better judgement I let them talk me into singing. Of course I gave the performance everything