Famous quotes by James Lipton:
"I'd like to welcome you all to my venue, which is a bit cheeky, since it isn't my venue quite yet."
"We still are now nothing more than a course. The show will continue to be a classroom, with the students as our audience, in a great institution."
"I wanted when we began this to have a conversation, the kind that you're able to have, and the only way I knew how to do it was not to have a pre-interview."
"I had something called the back of the chair test. Where I sit, we don't sit like you and I do. I can see a sliver right behind them and they come out and they sit like this like god students and they don't touch the back of the chair."
"The foundation for film acting is stage acting."
"The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive."
"I did get Tom Hanks to say, Life is just a box of chocolates."
"The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do."
"Olivier was another case of a genius, who couldn't understand why anybody would have any trouble doing this, because for him it came so easily."
"Because - Bobby Lewis said this once to us in class, the better you get, the less credit you'll get. Because the better you are, the more it looks like walking and talking and everybody thinks they can walk and talk."
"I was dealing with craft, and that's the surprising thing, the number of people who have literally broken down on our stage, because when you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong."
"And I thought, my God, there's an off chance that they will say something that's really worth preserving and there is one way to do that and I knew what it was because I come from television."
"I was originally going to be a lawyer, and the only thing I remember from the art of cross-examination is - you can see this one coming up Sixth Avenue - never ask a question the answer to which you do not know."
"Geniuses always think it's easier than we make it out to be."
"When it began I wrote this passionate letter to people I knew, studio members, of course, and other people with whom we have worked over the years and I said come and teach our students."
"They change. They're different. There are no two alike, that's the miracle of it. But if they have something to teach the students. You can see them writing during the show."
"Hackman is able to live in the moment which means there is nothing for him at that split second than what is occurring in the scene."
"Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not."