Sometimes, when the material is really good, you put expectations on yourself to make it the best possible show. You're not just serving up the regular hash and doing your job and going home.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of high standards in artistic expression and the pressure that comes with it.
Peter Dinklage discusses the burden of expectations that artists face when they encounter exceptional material. Rather than treating their work as just a routine job, they feel compelled to elevate their performance, striving to deliver something extraordinary.
In practice
In a speech at an art gala, one could quote this to inspire artists to pursue excellence.
It's a shame how a lot of actors use theater as a stepping stone to film and television work; I think it shouldn't be treated that way. Maybe it's narcissism or something. I think we should always go back to it. I try and do a play a year, and I think that's really helped me.
Any swagger is just defense. When you're reminded so much of who you are by people - not a fame thing, but with my size, constantly, growing up - you just either curl up in a corner in the dark or you wear it proudly, like armor or something. You can turn it on its head and use it yourself before anybody else gets a chance.
Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I'm seemingly O.K. with it, I can't preach how to be O.K. with it. I don't think I still am O.K. with it. There's days when I'm not.
I think actors get too comfortable. I like being uncomfortable as an actor because it keeps you alive. I don't know, I think it's important.
Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It's one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice.
Call me a midget, but just be real. I am all for correct terms, but please don't tiptoe around feelings. Don't be too careful, because that shuts you off from people.
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
Music played a large role in the survival of the black people in America — that and a sense of humor that just couldn't be enslaved.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
My work on titles was a marvelous opportunity to learn about filmmaking. I think I touched on just about every aspect of the process, both creative and technical. And I worked with many wonderful people.
With Bound, we wanted to pull at conventions, because you begin to wonder, Why do these stereotypes exist? Where do they come from? You use that as the subtext.
When I provided the disembodied arm as the logo for 'The Man With the Golden Arm,' it was the first time an advertising-publicity campaign was based on a single symbol. Until then film companies used a variety of symbols and photographs to cover all bets. The concept of using one logo was mine and Otto Preminger's.
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