A mime is a terrible thing to waste.
Marcel MarceauRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of foundational techniques in the arts, specifically in mime, to ensure artistic expression and survival.
Marcel Marceau highlights the significance of mastering fundamental techniques and stylesβin this case, 'statuary mime'βas essential for any artistic endeavor to thrive. He credits his mentor, Etienne Decroux, for teaching him this grammar, suggesting that without a strong foundation, art cannot endure or develop in meaningful ways.
Themes
MimeArtGrammarStyleCreation
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of training in the arts.
More from Marcel Marceau
All quotes βIn 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.
Marcel MarceauRead
Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.
Marcel MarceauRead
I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.
Marcel MarceauRead
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.
Marcel MarceauRead
Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
Marcel MarceauRead
Similar quotes
We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.
Ross MacdonaldRead
For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.
Ruth BernhardRead
All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.
Martin ShortRead
I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time itβs really useless.
Ai WeiweiRead
As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.
Ralph FiennesRead
Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.
Nick HornbyRead