Procrast-creating

Interested in: acting, philosophy, science, psychology, poetry, Shakespeare and self-help. Quote enthusiast.

[bo-jnr]

“Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.” –Henri Matisse

[bo-jnr]

“When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you. But if you can avoid avoidance - if you can choose to embrace experiences out of passion, enthusiasm, and a readiness to feel whatever arises - then nothing, nothing in all this dangerous world, can keep you from being safe.” ~ Martha Beck

[bo-jnr]

“O' great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives” - Jim Morrison, An American Prayer

[bo-jnr]

How to Live

(Horace, Odes, Book One, 11)

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope

of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.

Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow

us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now

which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,

decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years

which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest

one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

–Derek Mahon, The Hunt by Night (1982)

[bo-jnr]

“If you find yourself riddled with self-doubt, remember that the world didn’t say, 'You can’t have this.' You did.” - Mel Robbins

[bo-jnr]

“The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.” - Les Brown

[bo-jnr]

“All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this:

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.

Clear out, by an easy imaginative feat, all the distrusts and timidities, all the fears of looking ridiculous which you may hardly suspect of being treacherous troublemakers in your life. You will find that if you can imaginatively capture the state of mind which would be yours if you knew you were going towards a prearranged and inevitable success, the first result will be a tremendous surge of vitality, of freshness. Then - well, the only way to put it is that it will seem as though your mind gave a great sigh of relief, of gratitude for the liberation, and stretched itself to its fullest extent. This is the moment where one may be forgiven for feeling that there is something truly magical about the whole affair. There will appear an extension of capacity which seems more than normal.

Then the long-dammed-up flow sets in: directly, irresistibly, turned at last in the right direction, the current gathers strength from minute to minute. At first you may still harbor some fear that the spell which worked so instantaneously may break in the same way. It will not, simply because it is no spell; it is a reminder to yourself of the way in which work can always be successfully undertaken. If you remember that, far from your seeing the successful action stop, you will find that each hour of unhampered activity opens out into a promise of others in the future. There may actually be some embarrassment from seeing too many expanding possibilities until you have learned to organize your new life.

Those fears, anxieties and apprehensions, you see, were far more than mere negative things. By acting as if they were important, you endowed them with importance, you turned them into realities. They became parasitic growths, existing at the expense of everything that is healthy in you. While we allow them to sap us, we are allowing the nourishment which should go towards expanding growth to be used for feeding monsters, cherishing the freaks and by-blows of the mind instead of its extraordinary and creative elements. So that it is not that one is suddenly given wonderful new powers; by ceasing to let fear hold its frustrating sway we come into the use of already existing aptitudes which we formerly had no energy to explore. We discover that we already possess capacities we had not suspected, and the effect, of course, is as though we had just received them. And the rapidity with which these capacities make themselves known when once the aspects are favorable for them is truly somewhat startling. It is even more enjoyable.” - Dorothea Brande: The Will to Live

[bo-jnr]

“Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Everybody acts, whether it's a toddler who quickly learns how to behave to get its mother's attention, or a husband and wife in the daily rituals of a marriage, with all the artifices and role-playing that occur in a conjugal relationship. Politicians are among our most flashy and worst actors. It's hard to imagine anyone surviving in our world without acting. It is a necessary social device: we use it to protect our interests and to gain advantage in every aspect of our lives, and it is instinctive, a skill built into all of us.

Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long. When we don't feel the emotions someone expects of us and want to please them, we act out the emotion we think they expect of us; we're enthusiastic about their project even though it bores us. Someone says something that hurts our feelings but we hide our hurt. The difference is that most people act unconsciously and automatically, while stage and movie actors do it to tell a story. In fact, most actors give their best performances after the camera stops rolling.” - Marlon Brando (Songs My Mother Taught Me).

[bo-jnr]

“Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.” - Kenneth Branagh

[bo-jnr]

“Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little". - Dale Carnegie

[bo-jnr]

“There is only one you. The way you see things and your perspective is the artist’s eye that you bring your work. Always concede as little as possible to character. If you can use yourself in the part as is, do it. Only make the adjustments that are absolutely necessary. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. You’ve been you your entire life. You’ve taking you into countless situations. You’ve been with you at every life-changing experience you’ve ever had. Throughout life, you have counted on you to get you through your toughest ordeals. You have trusted yourself to be your own best wing man. Trust your judgment and your ability to make the same interesting choices you have made your entire life.” - Jeff Seymour

[bo-jnr]

"You are preparing every day of your life--or you should be. I'm enraged by the term 'getting ready.' Well, I mean, you're past the point of needing to be ready; you can't be 'getting ready.' I think it's a narcotic. I think Tennessee [Williams] is quite right about that. Making notes; praying; talking it out. This is seen as preparation. Listen, no one is ever perfect or just what everyone wanted. You just go out and show up ready, prepared, energetic, grateful, fulsome. You astonish yourself and others when it turns out you were exactly what was needed, but you don't 'get ready' for this. You show up prepared to be what was needed. Each and every time." - Katharine Hepburn

[bo-jnr]

“I don’t do a lot of preparation, everything I need is in the script. The character is a trick we play on the audience — you don’t have to live the character. That’s not acting, it’s mental illness. And Phil disagreed. He said, ‘No, I think there’s things you can do to get into the world. Whatever’s going on, you’ve got to find it in yourself, and I think you have to submerge yourself into the world of it'”. - William H Macy

William H. Macy discusses friendship with ‘Boogie Nights’ co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman

"He was the best of us; he was never bad."

[bo-jnr]

“Acting is doing things truthfully with a purpose.” - Harvey Keitel

[bo-jnr]

“To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement,

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return,

To live is to risk dying,

To hope is to risk despair,

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow,

But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.

Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.”

~Leo Buscaglia

[bo-jnr]

“I've always felt that acting is about exposure. You expose yourself in the choices you make. It's when you present yourself as truthfully as you can, in a given situation, that you are being that character. Even though you're being yourself.”

“Sometimes, the vanity of actors is that we imagine we're so completely different on screen from who we are in real life. When really, all actors play themselves.”

- Gabriel Byrne

[bo-jnr]

“I started with Sandy Meisner. What Sandy taught me is what all of us have been saying: Start from yourself, drop your masks and say, "Who I am is my richest reservoir to draw from." I think that a lot of actors come in with shame - it's in their bodies, in their voices - and that you have to work diligently with the actor to get them to reveal the core of their emotional self without inner judgment. That which is antisocial is the very thing you're looking for in the actor, and you have to allow them to be what they consider to be antisocial - to be able to express with no filter. If you start with that clay, then you can start to talk to them about Strindberg and Ibsen and Shaw and Williams and Miller. But until that happens, it's like trying to play the piano with the lid down.” - Larry Moss