Actors From New York City

"See, I went to an all-gay high school. Art and Design. Now the truth is it wasn’t really all gay, but they bused them in, it was the law. [...] So I went to this high school, I had friends like Pablo. Pablo used to breast-feed a porcelain doll during math. You know. My friend Lauren used to roll cigarettes on her boots."

"You’d probably just lost your virginity, I’d probably just lost count."

"Hello, boys. How are you all? I just love boys. [...] Hello. Are you here alone? Who are you with? ...A woman? At my show? ...We'll make believe. It's theatre."

"I’ve been travelling a lot. My boyfriend and I, we just went to Santa Fe. You know, the one named after the gay saint. Has anybody ever been to Santa Fe? …did you know it was a desert? I didn’t know it was a desert. Hated it! People had been telling me for years, if you’re an artist, a non-conformist, come to Santa Fe! I mean, it’s the place you can be yourself! The light, the light, you can paint here! You can live here, the space, the sky! – The fucking dust! I was doing an AIDS benefit there – like what else do I do with my life? – and I said, look, I’m a guest here, you’re paying for the hotel, I don’t mean to insult nobody, but I got a little suggestion for you. If I was yaz, I’d take a hose, hook it up to Colorado, and water this fucking place!"

"I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to."

"I can't say what Danny Kaye is like in private life. There are too many of them."

"I am a wife-made man."

"I can say what Danny Kaye is like in real life. He's nice and gentle but he has a bit of a mean streak."

"Civilization? I'll stay right here [in the Congo]!"

"[E]xclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values."

"I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be."

"My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six."

"… life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there."

"You don't put statistics on trial, you put individuals on trial."

"One of the most basic things I've tried to do is give people a greater understanding of how science works - the importance of evidence, the importance of many trials, of rigorous studies, and the idea that we learn only a little bit at a time. . . . Making people aware of that process helps increase appreciation and respect for science, and that helps us make informed decisions for our families and ourselves."

"Susan, an only child who never had any roots, and I, a lone wolf who got married 20 years too late, were adopted by the kids as much as they were by us."

"Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told."

"Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were."

"No worse than a bad cold."

"I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear."

"If I'm trapped in a theatre, and a show starts disappointingly, I have a handy way of avoiding it: I fall asleep."

"Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one."

"O, Harpo Death and thy clanking harp, hear!"

"exclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"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."

"Is it so simple or so black and white that rich people are just kind of inherently bad? And it’s obviously not the case."

"Just because you are lucky does not mean you make good choices."

"A lot of people can forget about you in Los Angeles."

"You have a moral obligation to finish the job you said you would do."

"There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever."

"Adapt and overcome."

"Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived"

"Remember the mind is your best muscle ...BIG ARMS can move rocks, but BIG WORDS can move mountains... Ride the brain train for success...."

"The films are realistic fantasies. Bullets are easy. You can buy them. Emotions are not. They're priceless."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences. As the younger, more left-leaning "New Hollywood" generation swept into the industry in the late '60s and '70s, this older group of Hollywood conservatives faded away, never to be replaced. Except for a brief period in the '80s when the Reagan Presidency led to a conservative reengagement with film—with popular stars like Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger making macho, patriotic action films—conservatives appeared to abandon popular culture altogether. In the wake of this retreat, conservative failure to engage with Hollywood now appears to have been recast by today's East Coast conservative establishment into a generalized opposition toward film and popular culture itself. In the early '90s, conservative film critic Michael Medved codified this oppositional feeling toward Hollywood in his best-selling book Hollywood vs. America."

"Is there anybody here but me who needs to know?"

"Too bad about Koufax's arm. He can't shave. Or brush his hair. All he can do is pitch."

"Getting a hit off Koufax is like trying to eat soup with a fork."

"The Dodgers had us back for Jackie Robinson Day, and before the game started, we're up in the press box, and Rachel Robinson is there, and Jackie's son and daughter. The Dodgers were playing the Reds, and Sandy Koufax walks up and says "Jerry, this is amazing. There's not one player on the Dodgers that is African-American." He said that it was sad that we're up there celebrating Jackie Robinson, but not much has changed."

"We need just two players to be a contender. Just Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax."

"It's no disgrace to get beat by class."

"It sounded like somebody firing a pistol in a canyon . . . pow, pow, pow. That was the sound of the fastball popping Rube's mitt in that empty ballpark. We all came in to watch this kid."

"He's the greatest pitcher I ever saw. I can still see that big curveball. It had a great arc on it, and he never bounced it in the dirt. Sandy's curve had a lot more spin than anybody else's -- it spun like a fastball coming out of his hand -- and he had the fastball of a pure strikeout pitcher. It jumped up at the end. The batter would swing half a foot under it. Most of the time we knew what was coming, because he held his hands closer to his head when he threw a curveball, but it didn't matter. Even though he was tipping off his pitches, you still couldn't hit him."

"Sandy Koufax. Sandy was a special problem for me because he possessed exceptional control, speed and a great curve ball. He was highly disciplined, extremely committed and a very private person. These qualities enabled him to concentrate on his profession without a lot of unnecessary distractions."

"I'll always remember that first pitch. It was a fastball that looked like it would hit the dirt in front of the plate. Then, all of a sudden, it rose for a knee-high strike. As soon as I saw that fastball, the hair raised up on my arms. The only other time the hair on my arms ever raised up was in Rome when I saw Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."

"If there was one game I had to win and I could pick any pitcher in any era, I'd pick Sandy. I'd sit in the bullpen and watch him paint that outside corner with a 95 mile-per-hour fastball and throw curves that looked like they were dropping out of the third deck. I'd think, "I'm gonna relieve this guy? With my stuff?""

"I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it."

"Pitching is the art of instilling fear, making the man flinch by making him look for the wrong pitch. You're trying to control his instincts. But if your control is suspect like Ryan's is, and the thought of being hit is in the batter's mind, you'll go a long way."