Best Quotes from Creating A Role by Konstantin Stanislavsky with Page Numbers

"First impressions have a virginal freshness about them. They are the best possible stimuli to artistic enthusiasm and fervor, states which are of great significance in the creative process."

"The power, depth, and permanence of these impressions is such that the actor must be particularly careful about his first acquaintance with a play."

"Prejudices block up the soul like a cork in the neck of a bottle."

"Let an actor remember that his own opinion is better than that of an outsider, better even than an excellent one, if only because another's opinion can only add to his thoughts without appealing to his emotions."

"The feelings that seem true in given circumstances..."

"Art is the feeling that creates, not the mind; the main role and the initiative in art belong to feeling."

"Through the conscious to the unconscious—that is the motto of our art and technique."

"Without imagination there can be no creativeness. A role that has not passed through the sphere of artistic imagination can never become engaging."

"Every human being lives a factual everyday life, but he can also live the life of his imagination."

"To appraise the facts means to comprehend (therefore feel) the inner pattern of the life of a human being."

The creative process of living and experiencing a part is an organic one, founded on the physical and spiritual laws governing the nature of man.

Inner impulses—the urge to action and the inner actions themselves—acquire an exceptional meaning in our work.

Life is action; that is why our lively art, which stems from life, is preponderantly active.

Every passion is a complex of things experienced emotionally; it is the sum total of a variety of different feelings.

The secret of inner technique and its essence are concealed in them.

Deeply passionate emotions are necessary to carry away feelings, will, mind, and all of an actor's being.

An attractive aim, a creative objective, is the lure for our emotions.

The actor must learn how to compose a score of lively physical and psychological objectives.

Creative emotions are not subject to command and do not tolerate force.

The essence of art and the main source of creativeness are hidden deep in man's soul; there, in the center of our spiritual being, in the realm of our inaccessible superconsciousness, our mysterious 'I' has its being.

"An actor can alter the circumstances of the life portrayed on the stage, he can find it in himself to believe in a new superobjective... all this will make the actor seem different in every role to the audience."

"For if you take an imaginary but lifelike circumstance and inject it into actual life, it acquires a kind of vitality, often more attractive and artistic than reality."

"I must establish the state of 'I am.' This time I am not doing it in my imagination but in real life;... it is much more to the purpose to use reality for my creative ends."

"How can one guess the feelings of another? How can one get inside his skin, put oneself in his place?"

"The day is scarcely on its feet, and I am at yours!" Chatski's own words burst from me. I could not have found a better way to greet her.

"Our own words are the direct expression of our feelings, whereas the words of another are alien until we have made them our own, are nothing more than signs of future emotions which have not yet come to life inside us."

"The mechanical habits of an exercised body and its muscles are very strong and stubborn... whereas on the contrary his emotion memory, the memory of sensations, emotional experiences, are extremely fragile."

"The more substantial the inner creativeness of an actor, the more beautiful his voice should be, the more perfect should be his diction, the more expressive should be his facial movements, the more graceful his body..."

"You experience an emotional state and you can make others, with whom you are in communion, do the same."

"The mass feeling enhances his feeling of being electrified, it intensifies the atmosphere in the auditorium, and it increases the flow of inner currents."

"Your first acquaintance with a part should be unforgettable."

"If the impressions of a first reading are properly received, that is a great gauge of future success."

"To correct a spoiled impression is more difficult than to create a proper one in the first place."

"A true poet scatters the pearls of his talent with an open hand throughout a play. This is the best material for excitement, the hot, explosive stuff with which to ignite inspiration."

"Enthusiasm—being swept away by the play and by one's part—that is the best way to come close to it, to understand and really know it."

"The ability to fire his feelings, his will, and his mind—that is one of the qualities of an actor's talent."

"It is dangerous to ruin that moment by the wrong approach to the work of a poet, because it may give you a false conception of the play and part or, what is worse, a prejudice about it."

"You must learn to protect your independence and ward off preconceptions. You must form your own opinions and not recklessly accept those of others."

"Your first estimate of a new work should be made without benefit of aid from scholarly colleagues, on the basis of the practical methods taught here."

"The creative emotions of an actor thus aroused will unconsciously probe throughout a role into depths of feeling not seen by his eyes or heard by his ears or noticed by his reason, but only unconsciously guessed at by his ardent artistic emotions."

The creation of the physical life is half the work on a role because, like us, a role has two natures, physical and spiritual.

An actor on the stage need only sense the smallest modicum of organic physical truth in his action or general state and instantly his emotions will respond.

The physical approach to a part can act as a kind of storage battery for creative feeling.

You must radiate your will to penetrate those walls.

If you are only going to stand beside those chairs and stare at them you are bound to fall into the worst kind of falseness.

The spirit cannot but respond to the actions of the body, provided of course that these are genuine, have a purpose, and are productive.

In these small and large objectives and actions seek out the small and large physical truths.

When you believe, you feel that your objectives and actions have become something real, living, purposeful.

Do not let up on the work we have begun; come every day and go over... its basic outline.

The point is not the words. The line of a role is taken from the subtext, not from the text itself.

"...the best thing that can happen to an actor is to have his whole role form itself in him of its own accord."

"The purpose of the analysis is the emotional deepening of the soul of a part in order to comprehend the component elements of this soul."

"Only through genuine emotional experience can one penetrate to the secret wellsprings of human nature in a role..."

"The knowledge of one's physical being is a splendid and fertile field for growth."

"If you try to reach feelings directly, without preparation or support, then it is difficult either to grasp or to hold fast to the delicate substance of their pattern."

"Every action which is carried out not merely because of some external reason but because of some inner impulse is incomparably more effective..."

"You must either fill up the hole or throw a bridge across it. That is why we need the justification of facts."

"The present cannot exist without the past or without the future."

"In order to understand and evaluate what is secreted in a piece of work we have to have imagination."

"Your thoughts should bring forth emotions; your emotions should spring from your very life experiences to create a bond with your character."

"Let each actor give an honest reply to the question of what physical action he would undertake, how he would act in the given circumstances created by the playwright."

"It is necessary to study things you are perfectly familiar with off the stage. What a difficult job it was! But in the end you accomplished it..."

"The difficult became habitual, the habitual, easy. In the end you were in possession of the physical side of your parts."

"The point of the physical actions lies not in themselves... but in what they evoke: conditions, proposed circumstances, feelings."

"There is an unbreakable bond between the action on the stage and the thing that precipitated it."

"Through them we try to understand the inner reasons that gave rise to them, individual moments of experienced emotions..."

"This awareness is not intellectual but emotional in origin, because we comprehend with our own feelings some part of the psychology of our role."

"Your job is to seek help in the method I have described to you. When you reach the moment of creation do not seek the path of inner stimulation…"

"My spirit and my place have in them power…"

"Your feelings know what to do better than you can tell them—but stick instead to the physical being of your role."

"Without this something his analysis of the play and part is purely intellectual."

"We must have the ardent and direct cooperation of our emotions, desires, and all the other elements of our inner creative state."

"An actor must always act in his own right, on his own responsibility."

"Live, true human feelings—that is the good soil for accomplishing your purpose."

"When you achieve the sense of being inside your part and its being inside of you, when it merges by itself with your inner creative state, then go forward with assurance."

"To find in yourself the same kind of human material as the author took from life...—isn't that a wonderful piece of conjuring!"

"The life of the one engenders the life of the other, either way around."

"Anything which an actor takes from his own life experience... can never be alien to him."

"The more often I feel the merging of these two lines, the more strongly will I believe in the psycho-physical truth of this state."

"If you work on your whole role that way you will get an inkling of its life—not in any purely intellectual or formal way but realistically, physically and psychically."