Tony Award Winners

"She was not an easy woman to categorize or to explain. If I´ve ever known anyone in my life, man or woman, who was unique, it was she. There was nobody like her before or since. Never will be. In every way. In talent, in looks, in character, in temperament. Everything. There sure wasn't anybody who didn't fall under her spell."

"And so she lived ... hopefully ... ever after."

"Neil Simon strikes me less as the new Moliere than as a rattier Rattigan."

"If you can go through life without ever experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet. And if you've gone through pain and think you know exactly why, you haven't examined all the options."

"A writer without confidence is like a metaphor without something to compare itself to."

"Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life."

"People with honorary awards are looked upon with disfavor. Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your brand-new Mercedes?"

"If I had to make one comparison, I'd say that when it's five below in New York, it's 78 in Los Angeles, and when it's 110 in New York, it's 78 in Los Angeles; but there are 2,000,000 interesting people in New York–and only 78 in Los Angeles. There may be a hell of a lot more, but it's hard to find them."

"You're welcome to take a bath. You look like the second week of the garbage strike."

"Money brings some happiness. But after a certain point, it just brings more money."

"Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage…Like two out of every ten couples."

"just as a racist remark by Jackie Mason does not reveal the inherent racism of all Jews, let us not assume that an anti-Semitic remark by Leonard Jeffries, or by ten Leonard Jeffries, reveals the heart of the African American community. We need to recognize the destructive role played by the media in fanning the flames of the "Black-Jewish Conflict.""

"Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe."

"King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare — or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear."

"The only great actor I have worked with who was not in any sense a star — there was no great publicity about him, no scandal about him, none of the attitude to stardom."

"He brought you face to face with the unfathomable. No actor summoned with such authority the mysterious depths of human experience."

"Beneath the gentle modesty of his behavior lay the absolute assurance of a born artist."

"I've found that an actor's work has life and interest only in its execution. It seems to wither away in discussion and becomes emptily theoretical and insubstantial. It has no rules except perhaps audibility. With every play and every playwright the actor starts from scratch as if he or she knows nothing and proceeds to learn afresh every time, growing with the relationships of the characters and insights of the writer. When the play has finished its run the actor is empty until the next time...and it is the emptiness which is, I find, apparent in any discussion of theatre work."

"I feel incredibly lucky to have discovered early in my life, practically when I was a child, that I could do something that in the end I finally wanted to do all my life. It has something to do with being completely removed from oneself, which doesn't necessarily mean one is uncomfortable inside oneself. It just means it's a great relief to be inhabiting somebody else. It can be a tremendously liberating sensation."

"Privacy is not negotiable."

"It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been."

"As you get older, the more you know, so the more nervous you become. The risks are much bigger."

"I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to be a star personality and live my life out in public. I don’t think it’s a good idea to wave personality about like a flag and become labeled."

"Oh, I suppose my wife and I will open a bottle of champagne with another couple."

"As an actor I don't admit to any limitations. In rehearsal one comes up against apparently insuperable barriers, but if one can imaginatively get past them, overreach one's natural reach, it is astonishing how elastic one can become. I've got to go not so far as I can, but as far as is needed. It's up to somebody else to say if I've made a fool of myself."

"I found at this point that effective acting wasn't what I wanted to do, that I didn't want to make effects, that I wanted, as it were, to leave an impression of a particular kind of human being."

"If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr? If you have always been that, then why lose your title? I have a title, which is the same one that I have always had. But it's not political. I have a CBE, which I accepted very gratefully."

"I love you, A bushel and a peck, A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. Hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap, Barrel and a heap and I'm talking in my sleep."

"On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons, Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell That beneath the silent coral of the Solomons, Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well."

"No, they've got no time for glory in the Infantry. No, they've got no use for praises loudly sung, But in every soldier's heart in all the Infantry Shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young."

"The producer orders a certain title. The musical director orders a certain rhythm. The dance director orders a certain number of bars. And the composer orders a certain number... of aspirin. [on working in Hollywood]"

"I've got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle, As I go riding merrily along. And they sing, "Oh, ain't you glad you're single?" And that song ain't so very far from wrong."

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition And we'll all stay free. Praise the Lord and swing into position Can't afford to sit around a-wishin' Praise the Lord, we're all between perdition And the deep blue sea."

"I'd love to get you on a slow boat to China, All to myself, alone. Get you and keep you in my arms evermore, Leave all your lovers weeping on the far away shore."

"He was a great influence on me. I don't know what happened to him. I think he failed and went to America."

"God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a lot of money. All they had to sacrifice was their talent."

"The movie industry is run by accountants in Hollywood and it's as simple as this; everyone has a number on their computer. They can look up Jeremy Irons and see what my last five movies have made. Say you want to make a $20m picture, which is relatively cheap. If Jeremy makes $9m, the director makes $5m, then you need a leading lady, and they just go through those figures - that's how casting happens. And none of my movies has made a lot of money."

"Most people are robust. If a man puts his hand on a woman's bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it. It is communication. Can't we be friendly?"

"I think that there is this idea that what you should go after is fame. That is a hugely mistaken idea because fame means absolutely nothing. This whole culture of wanting to become famous is on a hiding to nothing, a sign of a society that’s lost its way and will only judge people as being valid if they’re famous, which of course is all bullshit. As Tom Stoppard said, the only thing that fame means is that more people know you than you know.”"

"I'm a very difficult person. My wife's a very difficult person. Living together is difficult but all marriages are the same - desperately difficult. … I can't imagine letting a marriage go unless it's intolerable. Every time you get through a difficulty, the bond is stronger. If you're lucky enough to get to a stage where you have been together a long time, your lives are so intertwined. I think being polite and kind to each other is terribly important. That, more than anything, can go a huge way in relationships."

"I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. An actor like Al Pacino lives to act. I'm not sure though, there's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy."

"There's a kind of silliness in the theater about what one contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money... but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I’m not a modest fellow about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn’t [the theater] where your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?"

"Mostel: If I appeared there, what if I did an imitation of a butterfly at rest? There is no crime in making anybody laugh. I don't care if you laugh at me. Congressman Jackson: If your interpretation of a butterfly at rest brought any money into the coffers of the Communist Party, you contributed directly to the propaganda effort of the Communist Party. Mostel: Suppose I had the urge to do the butterfly at rest somewhere? Congressman Doyle: Yes, but please, when you have the urge, don't have such an urge to put the butterfly at rest by putting some money in the Communist Party coffers as a result of that urge to put a butterfly at rest."

"That's not girth. That's a para-umbilical hernia."

"I was a French Quarter rat from the moment I could get on a bus by myself and go to the French Quarter. I played music most of my early life and it just seemed that to entertain people was a really good thing to do."

"I've always hated the way I looked, and I've never complained about my brains."

"I hate being the subject of photographs."

"Don't kiss a man who hasn't shaved."

"It was all completely incomprehensible to me. I was fearful of the language. You had to look up every third word."

"Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought "Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!" That's not what I saw necessarily — but I don't think any two people see the same movie."