"In the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced it is my own fault. [Giuseppe] Verdi is one of those composers."
(Benjamin Britten nome completo Edward Benjamin Britten, barone Britten, compositore, direttore d'orchestra e pianista; Lowestoft, 22 novembre 1913 – Aldeburgh, 4 dicembre 1976)
"There are too many actors today. They don't speak clearly and they won't take advice. I can't stand old bores who go around talking abut 'when I was young' but I do know there's no discipline today. Kids are snapped up for television and films as soon as they learn to stand up straight. They have no training and many of them go to psychiatrists! I've never heard of anything more ridiculous. No actor of my acquaintance goes to one, and I certainly never would... There are a frightful lot of chi-chi classes teaching 'Method acting,' but it's such bunk... The rhetoric no longer seems to come from the heart as it used to. But I don't want to talk about the past. I live for now. I'm much better now than ever before and my best days are still to come."
(Edith Mary Evans, attrice di teatro che solo in tarda età fece film, ricevendo pure due candidature al Premio Oscar come miglior attrice non protagonista; Londra, 8 febbraio 1888 – Cranbrook, 14 ottobre 1976)
"The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil. Caught in a situation that had passed beyond the control of mere individuals, each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to. There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides. When you who are in your 40s or younger look back with curiosity on that dark time, as I think occasionally you should, it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims. Some suffered less than others, some grew and some diminished, but in the final tally we were all victims because almost without exception each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to say, to do things that he did not want to do, to deliver and receive wounds he truly did not want to exchange. That is why none of us--right, left, or center--emerged from that long nightmare without sin."
(Dalton Trumbo, sceneggiatore, scrittore e regista, costretto durante il maccartismo a fuggire in Messico e a lavorare per il cinema di Hollywood usando pseudonimi o prestanome; Montrose, 9 dicembre 1905 – Los Angeles, 10 settembre 1976)
"I can read...except for a very big word we sometimes have. Like the word philosopher. Do you know what a philosopher is? Well...it's a man that thinks a lot, but doesn't do anything much about it."
(Anissa Jones, attrice famosa per la serie tv Tre nipoti e un maggiordomo girata tra il 1966 e il 1971; Lafayette, 11 marzo 1958 – Oceanside, 28 agosto 1976)
