Josh Pais Quotes

One of the great exercises you can do is to stop and acknowledge the colors around you... If you're constantly distracting yourself, then you're never really experiencing anything fully. It can cause you to feel like you have no center, like nothing is grounding you.

I had to make sure I kept an eye on the real world.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

Some of you guys are sitting down, some of you guys are standing up. But if you really take a moment and you go inside your body, you can feel your weight against the earth, and you can recognize that you're the only person who's feeling your own weight against the earth right now.

You can't improvise if you are tense. Or thinking too much. You have to really let it go.

I know if I'm lost in the moment or not.

Live with all of your senses.

When I over-prepare, I try to let it all go and forget all about it when the camera rolls, so I can just be present with the other actors and allow what's going to happen to happen without too much preconception.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

I keep in touch with what's real.

I go to bed late. My mind starts going at night - that's when those creative juices begin flowing.

Once I'm on set, the only thing I'm really interested in is being in the room. Being present. And trusting that what I've done is sufficient, and I'm also trusting that I've also left room for magic.

You can see and you can listen, but you have to have moments in which you feel.

Being a director, whether you're in rehearsal or you're in auditions or you're in a creative meeting, is so much to me about being present in the moment. There's a sense of time stopping.

The mind is always present. You just don't see it.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

I pay attention to everything now - the taste of bread, the taste of water.

I prefer to be in tune with my surroundings and to be aware of things. I like listening to my foot strike and my breathing. It can be quite soothing.

My whole process is based on meditation as well as listening really closely to what the director says and what the choreographer says. I try to stay in the immediate present reality with my partners on stage, give and take reality.

Meditation is the practice of giving something your full attention and awareness. When I eat a truffle, for example, I focus fully on it and involve as many of my senses as possible.

You really have to be in touch with your soul and spirit and your imagination - it keeps you in shape, and it makes you like yourself a bit more.

The best thing anybody ever told me about acting - and I think it's probably true for life, generally - is listen. You've really got to watch, and you've really got to listen. Not see and hear.

I heard that your subconscious is on the right side. I always shut my right eye when I play, or both eyes. I feel like you go to a deeper place in your subconscious, and you tell the stories that are more deeply within you.

I just play, that's all. When I'm in the field, I always connect with what I'm doing. I can't explain it. I can't control it. It just happens.