If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.
Sanford MeisnerRead
You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Criticism is a vital part of learning and improvement, but it should be viewed objectively without personal baggage.
Sanford Meisner emphasizes the importance of constructive criticism in the learning process, especially in the context of acting. He warns against allowing personal insecurities to cloud one's ability to accept feedback, suggesting that criticism should be directed at the work itself rather than being taken personally. This perspective encourages individuals to view critiques as opportunities for growth rather than as threats to their self-esteem.
Themes
CriticismLearningObjectivityGrowthSelf-Improvement
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on acting, this quote can be used to encourage participants to embrace feedback as a valuable resource for growth.
More from Sanford Meisner
All quotes βYour acting will not be good until it is only yours. That's true of music, acting, anything creative. You work until finally nobody is acting like you.
Sanford MeisnerRead
Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.
Sanford MeisnerRead
Acting is the ability to live truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances
Sanford MeisnerRead
The only way to deal with yourself as an actor is to follow the emotional truth of what you have to do under the imaginary circumstances. And as you develop you become confident. You come to believe in what you're doing and trust it because it's out of you.
Sanford MeisnerRead
Similar quotes
Humans are not the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet, but when it comes to survival, we have had the unique advantage of being clever.
David PerlmutterRead
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other men have prepared for him-not even to consent to it; but to strive to see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in self-surrender.
Woodrow WilsonRead
What other people do shouldn't affect you - we do things because of the kind of person we each want to be
George C. MarshallRead
If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.
Henry FordRead
I believe in order that I may understand.
Anselm Of CanterburyRead