Shirley Booth Quotes

I firmly believe, only because I've been doing this for so long, every show takes three years. 90% of them don't get three years. It just does. It takes a long time to build a community, build a friendship with your characters. It's hard for people to grasp on and make them care about you.

When I finished performing 'I Won't Give Up' for the first time, I opened my eyes, and I think there was maybe six people in there when I started, and when I finished there was about 30 people, all standing around with their jaws dropped in complete silence. I said, 'Okay, I think this song has some power to it.' So coffee shops work for me.

Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success.

I wanted to make a film as an artist, and it's going to have to find an audience, you know. I don't know how big the audience will be.

But as long as you're creating the art you want to create, if people start liking you, you shouldn't have to apologize. You want your stuff to be heard by as many people as possible.

There is always an audience for different individuals, but critics sometimes stop the audience finding the show and the show finding the audience.

It's hard to get people up and out to shows, but 'The Walworth Farce' has masses of energy and will attract a crowd who don't always come to the theatre, which is great.

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

If you were to ask me when I was 17 if I was mad because I didn't have a deal, I would have probably said, 'Yeah.' Now I'm so glad I got it when I got it. People tell you to be patient and wait. Patience is not a virtue of mine, but I think everything definitely happened the right way for me.

As a creative, as an artist, I'm just excited when people want my stuff, and want to experience it.

I think any artist wants their artist to be seen and appreciated and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

We wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. That’s how art works. It’s never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. It’s the tortoises that hold all the secrets. We’ve got to be patient enough to wait for them.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

[On being an actor] .nothing more than a worker in a service occupation . It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky.

Be patient.Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.

I feel like movies when they work they'll find an audience.

I have a suggestion for all of those award seekers and blue ribbon hunters. Spend your efforts on making art that connects with people. Awards impress the grandkids but they don't move the gauge on selling your product. Art needs to touch the emotions of the buyer.

It art can only succeed through the cooperating imagination and intelligence of its consumers, who fill out, for themselves, the artist's world and make it round, and whose own special genius partly determine the ultimate glory of it.

Write and people will come to read. Write and people will heed to your words and share them with others. Not all may relate, but wait, and those that were meant to see it eventually will find it, for truth waits to be found. It searches for no one.

What gardening teaches us is that if you plant things, they'll come up. But you have to be willing to wait for them to bear fruit because things are seasonal.

Whenever I perform I try to connect with the crowd and give off energy so when they walk away from the show its remarkable and its something they talk about it, like 'damn I cant wait to come back to my show.'

Just because your prince hasn't come doesn't mean you're not a princess.

We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.

Many a cat can only be lured in by switching off all the lights and keeping very still. Until the indignant cry of a cat-locked-out comes at the door.

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.