"Any actress who appears in public without being well-groomed is digging her own grave."
— Joan Crawford

"Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature."
— Stephen King (The Waste Lands)

"Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull."
— Rod Serling

"When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise."
— Lauren Bacall

"There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!""
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead)

"I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they're more like groupy than glue. If they're on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with."
— Aidan Chambers (N I K Now I Know)

"The actor's life offers, on a daily basis, the simulacrum of love; a mask can be satisfied, or at least consoled, by the echo of what it seeks."
— Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)