As soon as I suspect a fine ...

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske

Quotes from the same author

You must make your own blunders, must cheerfully accept your own mistakes as part of the scheme of things.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske
...I have never known a movement in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various uplifting activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske
The essence of acting is the conveyance of truth through the medium of the actor's mind and person. The science of acting deals with the perfecting of that medium.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske
The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakspere [sic], and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske
Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, somethingyou can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places.
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 Minnie Maddern Fiske