 And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life. |
| When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language. |
| You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him. |
| I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know. |
| The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet. |
| When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. |
| I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know? |
| I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas. |
| In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia. |
| Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy. |
| Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers. |
| There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond. |
| My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being. |
| More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather. |
| So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school. |
| Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine. |
| I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really. |
| We children learned responsibility automatically. |
| No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement. |
| I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else. |
