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In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

 

Jean Cocteau

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I began my comedy as its only actor, and I come to the end of it as its only spectator.

 

Antonio Porchia

 

To God, world history is the royal stage where he, not accidentally but essentially, is the only spectator, because he is the only one who can be that. Admission to this theater is not open to any existing spirit. If he fancies himself a spectator there, he has simply forgetting that he himself is supposed to be the actor in that little theater and is to leave it to that royal spectator and poet how he wants to use him in that royal drama, The Drama of Dramas. This applies to the living, and only they can be told how they ought to live; and only by understanding this for oneself can one be lead to reconstruct a dead person’s life, if it must be done at all and if there is time for it. But it is indeed upsidedown, instead of learning by living one’s own life, to have the dead live again, then to go on wanting to learn from the dead, whom one regards as never having lived, how one ought-indeed, it is unbelievable how upside-down it is-to live-if one is already dead. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong p. 158

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.

 

Oscar Wilde

 

Seattle sucks. New York and Chicago are real cities. Seattle is Dubuque, Iowa, putting on airs. People here think Seattle is Paris... it ain't. I've been to Paris, and this place isn't Paris.

 

Dan Savage

 

I've always said that the actor is only an element of the image, rarely the most important. The actor is important with his dialogue, with the landscape, with a gesture — but the actor in himself is nothing.

 

Michelangelo Antonioni