Marcel Marceau Quotes

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

Never get a mime talking. He won't stop.

It's good to shut up sometimes.

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

...

Take space. It has to be either finite or infinite, yet neither possibility sits well with our intuitions. When I try to imagine a finite universe, I get Marcel Marceau miming on an invisible wall with his hands. Or, after reading about manifolds in books on physics, I see ants creeping over a sphere, or people trapped in a huge inner tube unaware of all the exposure around them. But in all these cases the volume is stubbornly suspended in a larger space, which shouldn't be there at all, but which my minds eye can't help but peek at.

In the words of Marcel Marceau...

No, your marrow, boy. You are weak-boned. Your bones are hard but your bones are not full. He nodded at August. 'Marcel Marceau's bones are hard and they are also full. Your brother possesses a strength that you will never have.' August shot a smug and knowing smile at me. 'But I've got great finger bone strength,' I said, flipping August the bird.

I walked out of a chic downtown Manhattan restaurant not long ago, with friends, before we’d ordered, because the music was so loud we were reduced to making hand signals. Four gestures I remember making (the extent of my sign language) were: “thumbs down,” “knife across throat,” “this is bullshit,” and “let’s get out of here.” The cacophony, increasingly, is the point. It’s a way to keep out the oldies, of which now, I suppose, we were. When I’m trapped in a restaurant that’s playing shitty songs at defenestrating volume, I think longingly of the house rules at St. John, Fergus Henderson’s restaurant in London: “No art. No music.” To crib a line from the poet William Matthews, the jukebox plays Marcel Marceau.

September 25, 2007 Paris To honor the death of Marcel Marceau I observed a minute of silence.

Avant de dire quelque chose, il faut s'assurer que le silence ne soit pas plus important.