QuoteProject
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
Bette Davis
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of larger-than-life portrayal in acting and storytelling.

Bette Davis suggests that both performances in acting and the narratives presented in scripts should transcend ordinary experiences, showcasing the grandeur and intensity of life. This larger-than-life approach allows artists to engage and inspire audiences by elevating storytelling to a dramatic and compelling level.

Themes

ActingDramaPerformanceStorytellingArt

In practice

Example use cases

A theater director might use this quote to motivate actors before a performance.

More from Bette Davis

I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
Bette DavisRead
I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Bette DavisRead
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Bette DavisRead
Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.
Bette DavisRead
If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.
Bette DavisRead
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.
Bette DavisRead

Similar quotes

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.
Charles BaudelaireRead
If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.
Tom RobbinsRead
Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad teas, as we have good and bad paintings - generally the latter.
Okakura KakuzoRead
Everyone who gave me food, who took away my hunger, inspired me to compose. They told me their stories, and I had no other way to console them than with a piece of music, and that is how I learned. I did not resolve their problems with my songs, but I created a moment of release.
Juan GabrielRead
In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless combining of a genre form with the deep resonance of literary art. This book is thrilling to read for both its narrative drive and its insight into the human heart.
Robert Olen ButlerRead
Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.
Lewis BlackRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.