Uta Hagen Quotes

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. envision the future.

The need to be loved and protected is at a peak when we feel abandoned and are particularly vulnerable to difficult circumstances.

It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.

The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious. And I am grateful.

Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one’s own experience and sensations, to make one’s self heard and seen. Talent alone is not enough. Character and ethics, a point of view about the world in which you live and an education, can and must be acquired and developed.

Overcome the notion that we must be regular; it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary.

The driver, whose name was Chase, pulled up in a silver Honda. He was cute, with a gap in his front two teeth—maybe age twenty-six at most. He looked like he was trying to grow a mustache, and his brown hair was past his ears under a baseball cap that read FML. He babbled that he was an actor, or was trying to become one. His favorite philosophy about acting was Uta Hagen’s, something about being a student of humanity. Well, for a student of humanity he was shitty at reading people. In my head I just kept saying, Shut up, shut up! I wanted to say, Don’t you know I am dying? But even in my dying I couldn’t be mean to him for fear that he would think I was a bitch. Why did I even care what he thought? Was my death unimportant? How could I prioritize the feelings of this vacant, mustached kid over my own—me, who was probably dying? I repeated, “That’s nice” and “Oh, interesting,” and lay down in the backseat. I didn’t announce that I would be laying down, I just did it. He wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing, instead going on about an upcoming audition for a prescription allergy medication where he would play the son-in-law of a woman with adult allergies. He said he had mixed feelings about it, because he didn’t want to limit his range to pharmaceuticals. The part he really wanted was an audition for Samsung next week. He was trying out to play the phone. “It’s not easy to make it in this town. I’m going up against two hundred other potential phones, at least,” he said, looking in the mirror at the traffic behind him. I noticed he had green eyes. He really was cute. I waited for him to comment on me lying supine in his backseat, but he didn’t ask if I was okay. I suppose this was normal behavior in California. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I wasn’t dead. I was breathing in the back of this cute idiot’s car. When we pulled up at Annika’s house, he stopped and said, “Okay, we’re here. Wish me luck at Samsung!” I opened my eyes and squinted at him. I wanted to tell him that I hoped he never got a part.