54 Memorable Theatre Quotes

Theater has long been a cherished art form that captures the essence of human experience through compelling stories, powerful performances, and unforgettable dialogue. Whether through dramatic soliloquies or witty banter, certain lines resonate with audiences, leaving a lasting impression. In this collection, we celebrate 54 memorable theater quotes that have transcended the stage, offering profound insights, evoking deep emotions, and inspiring countless individuals. Join us as we delve into these iconic words, revisiting beloved plays and perhaps discovering new favorites along the way.

1. “I want to burn with the spirit of the times. I want all servants of the stage to recognize their lofty destiny. I am disturbed at my comrades' failure to rise above narrow caste interests which are alien to the interests of society at large. Yes, the theatre can play an enormous part in the transformation of the whole of existence.” - Vsevolod Meyerhold

2. “Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.” - Terrence Mann

3. “I know. In fact, I am never wrong.” - Oscar Wilde

4. “We're actors — we're the opposite of people!” - Tom Stoppard

5. “Act well your part; there all the honour lies.” - Alexander Pope

6. “Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” - Constantin Stanislavski

7. “We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.” - Tom Stoppard

8. “Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you not only have the music, but you've got costume, story, acting, orchestra. There's a lot to take in.” - Stephen Sondheim

9. “The Director's Role: You are the obstetrician. You are not the parent of this child we call the play. You are present at its birth for clinical reasons, like a doctor or midwife. Your job most of the time is simply to do no harm.When something does go wrong, however, your awareness that something is awry--and your clinical intervention to correct it--can determine whether the child will thrive or suffer, live or die.” - Frank Hauser

10. “So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,and Robin shall restore amends.” - William Shakespaeare

11. “The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.” - P.S. Baber

12. “Et voilà. Maintenant le ressort est bandé. Cela n'a plus qu'à se dérouler tout seul. C'est cela qui est commode dans la tragédie. On donne le petit coup de pouce pour que cela démarre, rien, un regard pendant une seconde à une fille qui passe et lève les bras dans la rue, une envie d'honneur un beau matin, au réveil, comme de quelque chose qui se mange, une question de trop qu'on se pose un soir… C'est tout. Après, on n'a plus qu'à laisser faire. On est tranquille. Cela roule tout seul. C'est minutieux, bien huilé depuis toujours. La mort, la trahison, le désespoir sont là, tout prêts, et les éclats, et les orages, et les silences, tous les silences : le silence quand le bras du bourreau se lève à la fin, le silence au commencement quand les deux amants sont nus l'un en face de l'autre pour la première fois, sans oser bouger tout de suite, dans la chambre sombre, le silence quand les cris de la foule éclatent autour du vainqueur - et on dirait un film dont le son s'est enrayé, toutes ces bouches ouvertes dont il ne sort rien, toute cette clameur qui n'est qu'une image, et le vainqueur, déjà vaincu, seul au milieu de son silence…” - Jean Anouilh

13. “If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.” - William Shakespeare

14. “What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hathsuch meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?” - William Shakespeare

15. “The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.” - Iris Murdoch

16. “Once and for allthe idea of glorious victorieswon by the glorious armymust be wiped outNeither side is gloriousOn either side they're just frightened men messing their pantsand they all want the same thingNot to lie under the earthbut to walk upon itwithout crutches(Roux, act 1, scene 19)” - Peter Weiss

17. “This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?""To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said."To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice.” - Mary Stanton

18. “VIVA LA VIE BOHEME!” - Jonathan Larson

19. “I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so.” - John M. Ford

20. “people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.” - Charles Bukowski

21. “I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line.” - Peter O'Toole

22. “Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.” - Victor Hugo

23. “Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

24. “An actor must never be afraid to make a fool of himself.” - Harvey Cocks

25. “Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.His name, as I ought to have told you before,Is really Asparagus. That's such a fussTo pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.And whenever he joins his friends at their club(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.For he once was a Star of the highest degree —He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.” - T.S. Eliot

26. “What is that unforgettable line?” - Samuel Beckett

27. “You do not come to the thee-ator and it will wither your soul." (Madam Leadora Seamstress for the Royal Magnificent Theater)” - Kristen Britain

28. “I take thee at thy word:Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;Henceforth I never will be Romeo.” - William Shakespeare

29. “The closer they come to transcending technique and the memorization of lines--the closer to really beginning to act, in short--the more Chinese they begin to seem. Happy now approaches Miss Forsythe to pick her up in the restaurant with a wonderful formality, his back straight, head high, his hand-gestures even more precise and formal, but with a comic undertone that ironically comes closer to conveying the original American idea of the scene than when he was trying to be physically sloppy and "relaxed"--that is, imitating an American. I think that by some unplanned magic we may end up creating something not quite American or Chinese but a pure style springing from the heart of the play itself--the play as a nonnational event, that is, a human circumstance.” - Arthur Miller

30. “I am amazed all over again by how magnified this project's importance has become, far beyond its being a play or an artwork. It is now a test of some kind; but of what, precisely? The incommunicability of the Chinese? If I can't claim to know my actors, I know them as well or as little as I would an American cast. I can no longer call up the notion of Chinese mysteriousness.” - Arthur Miller

31. “If you want more people to come to the theatre, don't put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience.” - Catherine Tate

32. “That´s the problem with planning a late night supper after the opera, not only does the hero or the heroine die singing, but you end up famished after the last notes of the finale.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

33. “Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ...Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.” - Terry Pratchett

34. “Don’t forget that the boat and the water are in love with each other; you should never let them on their own; lo and behold, they have made an agreement with the wind and gone off on their honeymoon!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

35. “Is it possible to take river water back after it has mixed into the sea? The river and the sea are united and one now.” - Mehmet Murat ildan

36. “I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or a piece of music or theater or cinema that wasn't cultist and hero-worshiping. I was hungry. I got off the North Korean plane in Shenyang, one of the provincial capitals of Manchuria, and the airport buffet looked like a cornucopia. I fell on the food, only to find that I couldn't do it justice, because my stomach had shrunk. And as a foreign tourist in North Korea, under the care of vigilant minders who wanted me to see only the best, I had enjoyed the finest fare available.” - Christopher Hitchens

37. “Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?” - David Ives

38. “I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within.” - Hope Barrett

39. “The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped / on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind / the theatre where my play is echoed by dying voices.” - Frank O'Hara

40. “It has been said that the myth is a public dream, dreams are private myths. Unfortunately we give our mythic side scant attention these days. As a result, a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions. So it remains important and salutary to speak not only of the rational and easily understood, but also of enigmatic things: the irrational and the ambiguous. To speak both privately and publicly.” - Mary Zimmerman

41. “Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.” - Antonin Artaud

42. “I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty because I think one illuminates the other. We're all cruel, aren't we? We are all extreme in one way or another at times and that's what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with. I hope the overall view isn't just that though, or I've failed in my writing. There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies.” - Martin McDonagh

43. “Nevis tas moments ir skaists, kad tu runā, bet tas, kad tu klusē.” - Rūdolfs Blaumanis

44. “The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.” - Andy Goldsworthy

45. “Theatre demands different muscles and different aspects of one's personality.” - Victor Garber

46. “I think the same way about theatre, you go out there and you are creating a world for a moment that can actually have a real impact on people, present some kind of story that gives you something to think about when you walk away, feeling enriched - if it works out well.” - Jeffrey Jones

47. “I switched to thoughts of the play. It was by far the healthiest item to concentrate on. Rehearsals were only days away; there is something wildly exciting about a company assembling for the first time on stage. There is also something strangely sexy about it. I can't pin it down, there just is.” - James Kirkwood

48. “It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.” - Roman Payne

49. “The stage is not only a world apart, it is a myriad of worlds, and in those worlds a man can have anything he fancies, if only he believes in what he sees.” - Kathe Koja

50. “The verge, he likes to say. That's where we want them, the utter, utter verge.” - Kathe Koja

51. “He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad.” - Walter Scott

52. “The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.” - Tennessee Williams

53. “Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.” - Antonin Artaud

54. “When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. like being inside lightning.” - Meg Howrey