Marcel Marceau

A mime is a terrible thing to waste.

In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.

Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.

I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.

When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities.

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.

I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?