Quote

The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.

Theodore Bikel

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Theodore Bikel
Age: 91 †
Born: 1924
Born: May 2
Died: 2015
Died: July 21
Actor
Businessperson
Film Actor
Musician
Politician
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Trade Unionist
Vienna
Austria
Theodore Meir Bikel
Fault
Fresh
Faults
Air
Audience
Words
Play
Always

More quotes by Theodore Bikel

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Retiring' - within that word is 'tiring,' and I'm not tired. I don't believe in retirement, really.
Theodore Bikel
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You learn more from the flops than from the hits.
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You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.
Theodore Bikel
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For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.
Theodore Bikel
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John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.
Theodore Bikel
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What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.
Theodore Bikel
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I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.
Theodore Bikel
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While we all could agree that the Zionist ideal is alive and well, there is serious doubt whether the Zionist movement can be said to be an ongoing proposition, fragmented as its components are in ideology and in practice.
Theodore Bikel
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I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
Theodore Bikel
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Every actor wants to direct and produce, but I made a conscious decision when I was in college to understand the 'business' of 'show business.'
Theodore Bikel
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You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
Theodore Bikel
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We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.
Theodore Bikel
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Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.
Theodore Bikel
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I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.
Theodore Bikel
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In my world, history comes down to language and art.
Theodore Bikel
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Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.
Theodore Bikel
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As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
Theodore Bikel
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You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
Theodore Bikel
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I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.
Theodore Bikel
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I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.
Theodore Bikel