Immigrants To The United States

"Shakespeare used the soliloquy to give oral expression to thoughts. Since then the soliloquy had become obsolete. But it was a wonderful device: so I wanted to use a close-up of Sylvia Sidney, alone, in prison, and superimpose over it all her impressions and recollections. Again, everybody insisted it was impossible and that the audience would never understand what was going on. I argued that in the silent cinema they had used – and the audience had accepted – stylisation: simile, visual poetry. So why not in sound? That’s what I wanted to do with sound and, later, with colour. Now, of course, this use of audible thoughts over a silent close-up has become a convention."

"To accompany the transformations I wanted a completely unrealistic sound. First I tried rhythmic beats, like a heartbeat. We tried every sort of drum, but they all sounded like drums. Then I recorded my own heart beating, and it was perfect, marvellous. Then we recorded a gong, took off the actual impact noise, and reversed the reverberations. Finally we painted on the sound track; and I think that was the first time anyone had used synthetic sound like that, working from light to sound."

"I lifted the sound-proofed camera off its feet and set it in motion on pneumatic tires. Scenes moved out of one room and into others without halt. I tried to introduce what I call counterpoint of [a]ction and dialogue. The camera flew, jerked, floated and rolled, discarding its stubborn tripod-legs for a set odfwired wheels that raced over the studio floors. "The camera here becomes descriuptive in a new sort of way. Where a break in the ordinary film to allow for a close-up has been the modus-operandi, I now guide my lens along a strraight and continuous line, without breaks in continuity, without needless exolanatory speeches and also sans the printed subtitle."

"Garbo asked me: "What do I play in this scene?" Remember she is standing there for 150 feet of film – 90 feet of them in close-up. I said: "Have you heard of tabula rasa? I want your face to be a blank sheet of paper. I want the writing to be done by every member of the audience. I'd like it if you could avoid even blinking your eyes, so that you're nothing but a beautiful mask." So in fact there is nothing on her face: but everyone who has seen the film will tell you what she is thinking and feeling. And always it's something different. Each one writes his own ending to the film; and it's interesting that this is the scene everyone remembers most clearly."

"Sometimes I can’t even see out of my eyes because I’ve gone to a very dead drop space. Well, you could call it dead but maybe it’s actually very much alive. People get uncomfortable when you’re really listening, when you’re really paying attention, because we’re not used to that anymore. But now I can really see you. I can see all of you"

"As children, we think that everything that’s done by our parents is done because of us, and sometimes that’s not very true. Sometimes things can never be right, but they can be understood in a different way if we’re able to listen to each other and do that vulnerable dance that’s required of us."

"In life, we experience relationships sometimes as being traumatic, especially when outside events affect our parents. When they make decisions that we hold them responsible for –– that affect our lives, not knowing all of the reasons they made those decisions for their life –– [it] creates a little bit of [a] gap and a little bit of a traumatic experience."

"I love parts of the story that reflect our innocence and then guide us to understanding. From seeing when we become hardened and non-innocent, how sweet those moments were and from whence we came."

"I look for a complete script. I look for characters who are inspiring, and who move our imaginations from one place to another. It just so happens that I’ve been asked to play characters in certain projects that have had somewhat of an edge, a darker side, if you will."

"I mean for me to play desire, to play the desire not to be lonely is one thing, to play the desire to allow someone to know me. Right. So I relate to that in my life. Because people know me in my life as Gus Fring or Moff Gideon or Stan Edgar or a plethora of other characters. And so who really knows me? And do I want them to know me? Right. It depends on who that is. Right. So I used to want fans to know me, but now they know me through a variety of different characters. So then I have to ask myself, what is the reveal for me? And it’s the same for Gus. In that moment I’m thinking, oh, I desire to be known. For me I know I desire to be loved, I desire to be admired. I desire to be held. Thank goodness I have children who I can, I have daughters who I become more and more real, the more mature I get because I’m able to ask, I tell them, ask for what you want, but do I tell myself to ask for what I want?"

"I look at things to uplift me and to enthuse me; I don’t look at things to pay the bills and help me just survive. While some may be terrified of the characters he’s played, the actor views his antagonists in a different light. What I feel with each character is an excitement and enthusiasm, a deep commitment and vulnerability to allow them to speak to me."

"I've had some success in bringing some humanity to some of the villains that I played because I want to show that people are human and they do make mistakes and they do have the light and dark sides of themselves, and I had an idea that if we saw some of that we might be able to get wrapped around that in a way that we weren't able to before."

"These are the things I look for because I’m more seasoned than I was years ago. Directing is not about me. As an actor, God, it becomes all about me, and I don’t want it to be about me anymore. I’ve had enough of me."

"I’m acting but not acting because I’m in such a place where, as an actor, all I have to do is listen. Whether it be your voice, who I’m talking to, or whether it be the voice inside me — and maybe that’s the key that I’ve never, ever talked about."

"The words are important, but the intention is of even greater importance. My job is to interpret that. As an actor, I’m an interpreter and a channeler. As a director, I’m able to interpret and then channel something original, infuse it with an original energy that extends and tells the story even more clearly."

"During the 20th century, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, has experienced much pain and distress in the U.S. from these wounds of division, from both the Latin Church, often through misunderstanding, and from the Orthodox Churches, because of our fidelity to the See of Peter, which they view as a betrayal of our authentic spiritual patrimony. Despite numerous obstacles, through Divine Providence and the grace of the Holy Spirit, we have managed to survive."

"When you are able to let your expectation of what might be go and listen to what is proposed, then you can create a new vision for yourself and see yourself walking in those shoes again."

"As a director, I always look for projects that are uplifting and change the way we think about the world we live in, so those films aren’t always mainstream. I’m looking to do something that encompasses a man who’s trying to find himself, but it’s an action film. He’s struggling with something he’s done in his past and he’s moving through it in a way that puts him in a position where he becomes a stranger in a strange land. I want to tackle that."

"You can't just cast off someone when you realise, oh, there's something inside that person that is a hint of something good," Esposito adds. "Why are they doing all this bad and then as TV shows unfold, you sort of get the clue. They were bullied when they were a child. They really seek all power, all of these things. So I found a niche and finding a way to bring some humanity in some ways to villainous persona."

"I had to find a way to drop my spirit and allow myself to be more observant of other people. So in the first years of Breaking Bad, I liked to do the method routine because it kept people away from me. No one wanted to come and say hello or chat about the weather. I’m not that chatty guy on set. I’m not the joker. Now after 12 years of playing the character, I can allow myself to be a bit looser."

"I come from a European family. I had a very worldly way of looking at humanity and people and culture and religion, so I was surprised coming to America in 1962 as a young child to find there was this delineation [between races] here."

"Whether you are nineteen or ninety, whether you weigh one hundred or three hundred pounds, whether you move with ease or difficulty, whether your joints are supple or stiff-no matter. Dance. ("Dance Naked With Music")"

"It is almost as destructive not to respect and love oneself as it is to respect and love only oneself. ("Love Yourself as You Love Your Neighbor")"

"It is harmful to reject a human being; it is harmful to be rejected. When we do not respect or love ourselves we commit both offenses. ("Love Yourself as You Love Your Neighbor")"

"Energy is neither good nor evil. It is a neutral power which can be used well or badly. The art of living is simply the art of using energy in an intelligent and creative way...By daily practice, you can become a CONSCIOUS AND INTELLIGENT DIRECTOR OF ENERGY. (8: "THE ART OF CONVERTING ENERGY")"

"Beauty starvation is almost as widespread as love starvation. Often we do not realize that this is what we are hungry for. In our world of traffic jams and artificial flowers we are so far removed from the pure experiences of our senses that we do not even realize our deprivation. (16: "AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME, or Five Minutes of Beauty a Day")"

"I turn to Fradel Schtok and know that another woman writer experienced similar conflicts over mame-loshn. I read her stories of the shtetl and America and see the two worlds between which she was caught...All these Jewish women-Julia, Nadia, Patti, Gina, Fradel, Kadia-are my ancestors. They are mayne bobes, mumes, shvester, my grandmothers, aunts, sisters. Mir darfn zikh bakenen. We need to become acquainted."

"The town was in an uproar for some time after the news that Gitman, the Talmud teacher, was a freethinker. Imagine, if they hadn't realized it in time he might have converted the whole town. (first lines of "A Glass")"

"She took a quick, furtive look at him and felt her heart blushing. ("The Daredevil")"

"All this talk agitated Nessi. It seemed to her as though they were taking something holy and defiling it. Her train, her happiness. ("The First Train")"

"the silence stood like an iron wall, unyielding; it lay upon them like a heap of stones. ("The First Patient")"

"His laughter is meant to hide the greed that has begun to glint in his eyes. ("A Fur Salesman")"

"Just in the past two days the cherry trees had become a riot of blossoms. ("In the Village")"

"Hungry, she'd run to the cemetery and undam a river of tears."

"Gosi, on the other hand, was always a silent type, taciturn, stubborn. And while nobody blamed her, she didn't want to go to parties, always staying quietly at home, obstinately waiting for something. ("Sisters")"

""So what, a young boychik is better? Playing cards and wasting his time dencing. At least a stable man... So what if he's a little stingy. Vell, a person's got to have some kind of defect." ("Sisters")"

"Annie is an ignorant girl, who can barely sign her name. But even she can feel the music in her head. ("A Cut")"

"One must be stubborn to achieve one's goals, to be nobody's fool. ("A Cut")"

"They played some sad melody that drifted in through the window keeping people awake half the night. Some sadness would then grip the heart so you wouldn't know what it was you wanted."

"Esther was indeed a friend, but a friend is not as deeply rooted in one's heart as one's misery, as one's grief."

"People said: Sheyndl is right as the world. And so decent. But she: inside her heart cried. Every time she looked at her shaytele with the bangs in front, her heart would twinge. . .her head was already bound."

"Though she commanded attention by being the first Yiddish poet to use the sonnet form, Fradel's primary energy seemed to have gone into fiction. Her immigration must have had severe consequences on her writing and she obviously experienced language conflicts: Erzeylungen (Stories) appeared in 1919 and then an English novel, For Musicians Only in 1927. Both received poor reviews. Erzeylungen was set in Eastern Europe and in America. Some stories, humorous and satiric, depict Jewish society at critical moments: "Der ershter ban" (The first train) in a small shtetl or "Der ershter patsyent" (The first patient) of a young dentist in America. Other stories are more somber and describe the conflict between inner longings and social (i.e. Jewish) norms. Trapped by social and religious mores, Fradel's characters often cloak their feelings in "appropriate" behavior."

"What is rarely known except by scholars is the range and variety of the pre-Holocaust Ashkenazi communities of Europe: traditional, socialist, communist; Orthodox and secular; capitalist and worker; Yiddish-speaking and/or fluent in the vernacular of wherever they lived: Russian, Polish, French, Czech, German. ... There is a whole literature, not just Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, or Sholem Aleykhem, but also brilliant narrative writers and experimental poets such as Chaim Grade, Kadia Molodowsky, Anna Margolin, Mani Leyb, Itsik Manger, and a host of others."

"the eminent poet Kadya Molodowsky"

"As her reputation grew, she came to be called the "First Lady of Yiddish Poetry." Her volumes included Dzike gas (1933), Freydke (1935) and Likht fun dornboym (1965). Extremely versatile, she wrote children's literature, plays and fiction, much of which reflected her concern with 20th-century Jewish history. The play Nokhn got fun midbor (Toward the God of the desert, 1949) and the novel Baym toyer (At the gate, 1967) gave voice to her growing commitment to Zionism. Other fiction included the novel Fun Lublin biz New York (From Lublin to New York, 1942) and the collection A shtub mit zibn fenster (The house with seven windows, 1957). The latter shows Kadia's awareness of the tensions in American Jewish life. "The Lost Shabes," for example, reflects her observations of assimilation and the abandonment of Yiddish. "Oys" (Gone) describes how the Holocaust profoundly affected American Jews' sense of identity. Other stories-"Di kvin" (The Queen)-depict the materialism of American Jews. Her tendency was to romanticize European Jews who, she claims in the preface, didn't need interior decorators for their walls, just wanted to know which wall to face when praying. Still, her depiction of ordinary people is remarkable. Her characters never become bigger than life; rather they remain exactly who they are-ordinary and unaware of the large historical currents in which they are caught and which they shape."

"The young man wiped the fingers of his hand with his handkerchief, as if he wanted to wipe away the shame"

"The sorrow of all the poor people of the hill fell upon Feyge-Tsipe and spread across the whole house."

"In modern Yiddish writing, the moral, spiritual, and emotional capital of generations of Jewish women was utilized by male and female writers alike... Female prose writers, such as Fradl Shtok, Esther Kreitman, Rokhl Korn, Kadia Molodowsky, and Khava Rosenfarb, also deepened the awareness and understanding of the feminine contribution to Jewish civilization... In the realm of poetry, four female writers deserve special mention: Miriam Ulinover, Kadia Molodowsky, Rokhl Korn, and Rajzel Zychlinsky...Kadia Molodowsky's life in Yiddish literature took her from Poland to the Soviet Union, and from the United States to Israel and back. She made lasting contributions to the short story, the novel, the essay, and children's literature. In the United States,she also founded and edited the literary journal Svive. Her most important and original work, however, was in poetry. She was simultaneously the voice of traditional Jewish motherhood and of the struggling modern Jewish woman confronting ideas, emotions, disappointments, and hopes. Her philosophical poems, Holocaust poems, poems about Jerusalem, and children's poems are particularly noteworthy."

"I turn to Kadia Molodowsky, predominantly known for her poetry, but whose stories minutely depict assimilation in America as she witnessed it in the 1940s and 1950s. All these Jewish women—Julia, Nadia, Patti, Gina, Fradel, Kadia—are my ancestors. They are mayne bobes, mumes, shvester, my grandmothers, aunts, sisters. Mir darfn zikh bakenen. We need to become acquainted."

"This was the happiest laughter that was ever heard on the hill."