Minnie Maddern Fiske Quotes

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.

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

Among the most disheartening and dangerous of . . . advisors, you will often find those closest to you, your dearest friends, members of your own family, perhaps, loving, anxious, and knowing nothing whatever . . .

Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor

…an actor is exactly as big as his imagination.

Idealistic producing is safe. Sensibly projected in the theater, the fine thing always does pay and always will.

…I have never known a movement in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various uplifting activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism.

You must make your own blunders, must cheerfully accept your own mistakes as part of the scheme of things.

You must not allow yourself to be advised, cautioned, influenced, persuaded