Direct Address Quotes

You can't hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only when you are being addressed.

I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.

Address the people you seek, and them only

There is something timeless and beautiful about cooking straight to camera.

There is a feeling, when you listen to radio, that it's one person, and they're talking to you, and you really feel their presence as one person.

It's tricky with monologues, and I never like to use that word. Like I told the actors, you are talking to somebody; there is no such thing as a monologue.

What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?

I like a direct relationship between actor and audience.

He's not rewarding us by talking to us. He's talking to us because He has something to say to us directly, as opposed to the things He says to all humanity.

People think that direct address was invented by Ferris Bueller, but in fact, it wasn't. It was invented by Shakespeare.

To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.

I'm just not made for that kind of live audience where you don't create a fourth wall.

My major contribution to the format was to suggest that I be able to step out of the plot and speak directly to the audience, and then be able to go right back into the action. That was an original idea of mine; I know it was because I originally stole it from Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

I do not write for the reader to come, but for him who is here, short of reading the text on my shoulder.

I love breaking the fourth wall, and being given permission to play with the audience!

Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in.

Acting in 'Command & Conquer 3' called for me to interact with the player and to look directly into the camera, which is a big no no when filming for TV or film.

When I talk to the camera, mate, it's not like I'm talking to the camera, I'm talking to you because I want to whip you around and plunk you right there with me.

Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.

I want to talk to a nation, not to a select committee.

When the protagonist breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera in a movie, it's generally been used for comedic purposes, rather than feeling like they're looking into your soul.

There's something very self-conscious about a writer who's addressing his reader. Don't do that.

I first got caught up in this marvelous feeling of being spoken to in that very direct, private, magical way by a poem when I was really young. I was in grade school and had found an Emily Dickinson poem in a textbook.