Horace Walpole Quotes

All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.

The drama is a great revealer of life.

I'm interested in human nature. That's why I chose to become an actor. Whatever people are struggling with, the struggle is often where the drama is.

In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.

Shakespeare is all big themes, like the most amazing love, or the most scary war.

Our job is to represent the truth of human nature, whether you're playing a tender love story that's set in a coffee shop or whether you're in 'The Avengers,' which is set in a Manhattan which is exploding.

Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.

We like drama. Even in our comedy, we like drama.

Shakespeare wrote about love. I write about love. Shakespeare wrote about gang warfare, family feuds and revenge. I write about all the same things.

Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

When I'm doing a drama, I wish I was doing something funny. When I'm doing something funny, I wish I was doing something more serious. I think it's just human nature.

The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.

It's fun to play people who are flawed.

I like a drama.

There is a great deal of human nature in man.

It would be quite interesting to use Kermit the Frog to act like a real frog. But it wouldn't produce captivating theatre.

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object-Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes it. It also paints men, it aggrandizes them, it exaggerates them, it creates heroes and gods. History only depicts man, and paints him such as he is.

Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You're always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that's character. I loved her so much I hit her again; that's even more character.

To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.

Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

Israel is moving from the realm of poetry to the realm of prose.

My job as a dramatist is to find out where these characters want to go, and make it as hard as possible for them to get there.

Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man

Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself.