The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.

You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.

Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.

Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.

It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.

As long as you are ready to pay this price for living in the light (knowledge), the darkness (ignorance) becomes a servant to you.

Start planning from your internal or spiritual view of things. The external view always has a way of distorting, discouraging and limiting your dream.

Adversity or opportunity is university.

[We] need people who are kind by instinct, not by effort. But that is what we lack in this time. For progress, we have eaten our souls up, and nothing matters anymore.

I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine

A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture, designed to enhance the proportions of the female body.

Experience is retrospect knowledge.

Never tell anyone that you're writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death.

If you are hungry to hear the voice of God, you will hear. To hear, you have to cut out all other things.

Those who reject integration programs in the long term have as little right to stay in Germany as a hate preacher paid from abroad in a mosque.