Quotes by Simon Callow

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.'

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Having caught a glimpse of what I might be able to do with my talent, I feel a tremendous obligation to try to fulfill it.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Very often my weekends are spent performing on Saturday, on stage in the afternoon and again in the evening.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

— Simon Callow

Happiness

He always describes his characters' voices and their physique so brilliantly. As people have said, they are cartoons, caricatures. They're grotesques really.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

— Simon Callow

Love

You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on.

— Simon Callow

Life

Artists probably should have some impenetrable aspects of themselves.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

— Simon Callow

Success

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.

— Simon Callow

Life

He spent hours and hours and hours practising these conjuring tricks. It's just such a curious thing.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I don't have any big regrets.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

— Simon Callow

Life

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I'd like to direct more operas.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

— Simon Callow

Wisdom