Ibsen Quotes

• Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit.

  Liv Ullmann

  Spirit, Birth, Norwegians

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• You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

  Mandy Patinkin

  Pay

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• So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.

  Trevor Nunn

  Song, Play, Careers

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• I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics.

  Harvey Korman

  Chekhov

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• Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Beckett to me are the most revolutionary.

  John Cameron Mitchell

  Revolutionary, Chekhov, Beckett

  "Ruth Wilson". Interview with John Cameron Mitchell, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 31, 2016.

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• A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.

  David Mamet

  Writing, Play, Long

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• I did [Henrik] Ibsen and [Anton] Chekhov for years. Obviously I didn't get the kind of recognition I have now. Somebody once told me, "You ride the horse the direction it's going."

  Joe Manganiello

  Horse, Years, Recognition

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, New York, Writing

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.82, Canongate Books

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• Ibsen is at heart an optimist. He could not close his life's work with a note of negation. When We Dead Awaken is a clear, ringing call to the future.

  Jeanette Lee

  Heart, Notes, Optimist

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• 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.

  Minnie Maddern Fiske

  Beautiful, Play, Black

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• 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.

  Minnie Maddern Fiske

  Reading, Dust, Soul

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• Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs. Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five links on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life.

  Eleanora Duse

  Beauty, Rome, Flames

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• I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.

  Diane Ladd

  Looks, Accents, Irish Accent

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• I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise Shakespeare and Ibsen. You have to speak the language. But obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. As long as I know what I'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, I know that the response is genuine, I'm comfortable. That's really how I build everything.

  Victor Garber

  Long, Trying, Rooms

  "Victor Garber Talks BIG GAME, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, THE FLASH, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 29, 2015.

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• You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.

  Philip Larkin

  Crazy, Odd, Finnegans Wake

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• She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Might, Moments, Like Something

  P.G. Wodehouse (2009). “Summer Lightning: (Blandings Castle)”, p.120, Random House

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• Acting is rare. You can be rehearsing Ibsen with Sir Richard Eyre and suddenly he has to take a call on his mobile telling him his friend Arthur Miller has died. Or you can come back from a job on the Isle of Man to be told by your agent you're going straight out to South Africa on another shoot. There's not even any time to wash your pants.

  Jamie Sives

  Jobs, Men, Acting

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• The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door." The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?

  Al Gore

  Mistake, Thinking, Doors

  Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, delivered 10 December 2007, Oslo, Norway

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• Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence.

  George Steiner

  Western Culture, Three, Consciousness

  "In Bluebeard's Castle". Book by George Steiner, 1971.

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• If Ibsen's 'Enemy of the People' were alive today, he would recognize the ethic that has informed capitalist and communist countries alike - economic growth before public health and well-being. The true enemies of the people ar those who continue to sacrifice our long-term interests for short-term gains. But perhaps we should all look in the mirror.

  Susannah York

  Country, Sacrifice, Mirrors

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• I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.

  Alex Kingston

  Character, Thinking, Play

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• I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.

  Kurt Sutter

  Writing, Focus, Guy

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