Curtain Quotations

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is, so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

Death's not one of those things that frighten the life out of me. Getting up on stage with the curtain going up frightens me more.

I am a witness to nations and people deprived of their freedom. I was there. I watched that great Iron Curtain drop around nations which formerly had prized their freedom - good people. I was aghast as these were written off by the stroke of a pen.

Eudora Welty's 'A Curtain of Green' had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected.

The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable.

I was a rabid 'Seinfeld' fan. Then I did the show, and it ruined the show for me. Not that it ruined the quality of the show, but I had seen behind the curtain at Oz.

Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all.

One of the ideas that was developed at MIT in a workshop was, imagine this pipe, and you've got valves, solenoid valves, taps, opening and closing. You create like a water curtain with pixels made of water. If those pixels fall, you can write on it: you can show patterns, images, text.

When you lose a parent, you realize how vital they are to the foundation of your life. It's impossible to understand what it means until that curtain is pulled. You're an orphan. But then I think that life is kind of remarkable, and the thing that causes the biggest pain can also bring amazing energy.

I think the idea of 'Mary Poppins' has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life.

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever.

Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.

We didn't know anything about comedy duos - Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis - we didn't know anything about that. Kim Fields showed us a tape of Martin and Lewis and their old shows and they come through the curtain so we started doing research on them.

Whether you win or not, the night the Oscars are over, the curtain goes down and you go back to the grind. Period.

There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I'm used to traveling. It's not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It's the curtain coming up on another act.

The first thing I do when I walk into a hotel is find the gym, and if they don't have a gym, I start looking for a handhold where I can do my pull-ups. Sometimes if a shower curtain rod is sturdy enough, I'll do them there.

'Billy Elliot' prides itself on being a family show, and it made sense to specifically cater to a family audience with an earlier evening curtain time.

I've done three Broadway shows; once the curtain goes up, that's it. I mean, you prepare and you rehearse like crazy, but after opening night, the director's not there anymore, you know. He gives you notes during previews after each performance, but opening night, you're on your own.

My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn.

It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through.

One of the most important things you can do in your life is to learn to pull back the curtain of fear so you can see it for what it really is - the enemy blowing a lot of smoke and pushing your buttons.

My take is that these guys need challenges. Sometimes maybe they can get a little bored out there. But when they're locked in, it's like a curtain goes up and you can see it in their faces. They go from fifth gear into a sixth gear.

Oddly, in this age of the blinding white Oprah pantsuit, when everything is illuminated, it seems a Victorian lace curtain still hangs over the delicate womanly matter of our personal expenditures.

I don't display my plaques and honors. They are hidden behind a black curtain in my work room at home.

She truly is one of the legendary icons behind the scenes of country music. She didn't take the curtain calls, but a lot of us would never have heard Flatt & Scruggs if it hadn't been for Louise Scruggs.

We won't build another iron curtain within Jerusalem -- this is something Israel will not accept,

When her name is mentioned in the opera history books we will recall that vibrant, soaring tone-that and the blinding, high-beam-headlight smile that she flashed on her fans at each curtain call.

'West Wing' was huge. Like 'Hamilton,' it pulls back the curtain on how decision-making happens at the highest level, or at least how you hope it would be. The amount of information Aaron Sorkin packs into a scene gave me this courage to trust the audience to keep up.

If the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets, according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe along with the greater part of the Reich. An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered.

If it's a more, I'll say, aggressive rollover, the curtain will come down faster.

Ke$ha is her art; there is no curtain you peel back to find the real person. And with Ke$ha, you never know what to expect when you're in the studio.

I remember when I was doing 'The Crucible' on Broadway with Laura Linney, and Arthur Miller had been in rehearsal with us and was on stage on opening night. She turned to me during the curtain call and said, 'Let's make sure we remember this.'

It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is a immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamor. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which cam booming up with the spray out of the abyss.

I was in denial all the way to the hospital that morning. All the while I was thinking, 'These poor parents that don't know their child is dead yet, because I know it's not my daughter' and then I opened the curtain and there she was.

I think people will be surprised. We're going to use just the first 23 rows and curtain off the rest of the arena, so we can literally say there will not be a bad seat in the house.

I thought Randy went back out there for a curtain call.

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, "Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?

We had a little crisis when Matt and Sarah had to replace their shower curtain liner and we said no. But we put the word out and someone found one for them. It's like the Amish - we help each other out. We raise a barn every week.

We've seen the last of those white traverse curtain rods.

When Joan Rivers walked through the curtain on 'The Tonight Show,' nobody in my house was allowed to utter a sound. Her gait was full of pep and purpose and her voice unmatched.

When I served in the Army, along the Iron Curtain we had a word for a person who absconds with information and provides it to another nation: traitor. We also had a name for a person who chooses to reveal secrets he had personally promised to protect: common criminal.

Every time a curtain rises, so does the quality of our lives.

Countries like Iran and China support an Internet Iron Curtain that would censor political dissidents and deny anonymous activity online through mandatory registrations of IP addresses.

Is it like the Wizard of Oz? A guy behind the curtain with a megaphone or something?

The worst thing you can do is start slow, or con yourself into thinking that you can take your time getting into a match. The curtain is up so you've got to perform.

It was the Victorians who covered the piano legs and drew a heavy curtain over what a lady got up to in her boudoir.

Both sides have boxed themselves into a corner. I think they were going through the motions. This dialogue may well be the final act of diplomacy before the curtain lowers for a referral vote.

Now it is the last party to share the friendship Ballet Company of Opera de Paris is the last bouquet we present to China. Because of the company's high reputation of its artistic style and professionalism in the world as well as its long history and powerful artistic vitality, it is the ideal representative to bring down the curtain of Year of France,

As long as there are places in the state where poverty falls unevenly, we are still trying to build a perfect union, ... One day, there will not be a curtain between the Black Belt and the non-Black Belt.

That's kind of fuse for the show - those first 10-15 seconds you're onstage. The curtain drops and you see the crowd for the first time and they see you for the first time. The response and the energy that's going on right there - to me, that sets the tone for the rest of the night.

The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task: And when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything but gay.

The play is done; the curtain drops,Slow falling to the prompter's bellA moment yet the actor stopsAnd looks around to say farewell.It is an irksome word and task:And when he's laughed and said his say,He shows, as he removes the mask,A face that's anything but gay.

There is no reason to spend $400 a year on curtain fabric.

In each of the top-performing minivans, the curtain airbags did a good job of keeping the dummies' heads from being struck by the intruding barrier. This is important because head injuries are factors in many serious side impact crashes, especially when the striking vehicle is a pickup or SUV with a tall front end.

I'm 59. I can afford to retire, ... I feel for the younger guys. You always want to go off the stage when the curtain is down, not while it's still up.

I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.

Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy's, the Actors' Chapel on New York's 49th Street, peal the tune of 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway.

It's time to bring down the curtain on this ridiculous farce. This conflict revealed a profound regime crisis.

They created a Wizard of Oz PR machine that never went behind the curtain and looked at all the claims. Anybody who raised any questions about it was ridiculed and dismissed.

Cinderella is the tip of the iceberg. The juvenile market is just an entry point for this extraordinary new technology that will ultimately impact everyone of any age. What if your sheets could turn on a light without a switch? What if your pillows could talk? What if your shower curtain could play music?

I'll give you my worst nightmare. I'm dreaming that I'm onstage, the curtain goes up, and I have no idea what my lines are or what's going on. I think I should know, I kind of know, I remember rehearsing... and the audience is there waiting.

Changing a shower curtain can add a pop of color where there isn't color and a sense of design where people sometimes don't think to add a sense of design.

Good taste ruled every detail, ... When the curtain rose, we were drawn out of the everyday world into a world of grace and beauty where charming people with not-too-intense feelings played out unreal situations that never reflected the crude realities of life.

Anything east of the former Iron Curtain is still significantly cheaper than Western Europe.

The curtain call, it was great. You usually don't get a chance to do that in football.

The curtain has dropped, this majority is over.

The curtain is coming down on a feeble case presented by the government. In its rush to judgment, the government has failed to stop and learn about the benefits to customers, consumers of the innovation and the low prices that Microsoft has championed and made reality in the PC software marketplace today.

The ghastly thing about being a producer is that, once the curtain goes up, there is nothing you can do. At least when you are in it, you have some measure of control. If something goes wrong, you can maybe put it right. When you are in the audience, there is nothing you can do.

You've got to be the man to have a major league baseball game stop for you and to have a five-minute tribute and to have five or six curtain calls. That's when you know you've done something. ... It's obviously sad. I saw a tear come from his eye.

The idea with this show is to sort of pull the curtain back on the world of modeling.

It is time to call down the curtain on the sorry soap opera in the White House and restore dignity to the national stage,

It's always been an issue that when the curtain goes down, it is a mad dash. There really shouldn't be a need for that mad dash. This will allow people to grab a bite after the show. We're encouraging people to stay late and enjoy.

There is not much growth behind the curtain when all is said and done.

It wasn't until 'Smokey Joe's' came out that I actually got to step out from behind the curtain and meet our 'fans.'

We have a couple more curtain calls before the final song. We will have to make another statement the next two-to-three weeks.

It may be an Iron Curtain for the Crazy Dogs,

It looks like the curtain was right next to the light fixture and the curtain did actually catch fire.

He's not pining, he's passed on. This parrot is no more. He has ceased to be. He's expired and gone to meet his maker. He's a stiff, bereft of life, he rests in peace. If you hadn't have nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies. He's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot!

I don't like when actors go around and talk a ton about how they approach their roles, because it's a little like pulling the curtain back on Oz, for me.

The last time I felt so confident and excited about a coming season was in 1996-the year I won my world title. There is a real air of expectancy surrounding the entire Jordan team, and I am itching to get down to business and race the new car in this weekend's curtain raiser in Melbourne.

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; dies before thy uncreating word: thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; and universal darkness buries all.

Tree at my window, window tree,/ My sash is lowered when night comes on;/ But let there never be curtain drawn/ Between you and me.

When disaster strikes, it tears the curtain away from the festering problems that we have beneath them,

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close;And let us all to meditation.

Heaven's ebon vault, studded with stars unutterably bright, through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, seems like a canopy which love has spread to curtain her sleeping world