A Quote by Michael Shurtleff

Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake. — © Michael Shurtleff
Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake.
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Most people are searching for happiness. They're looking for it. They're trying to find it in someone or something outside of themselves. That's a fundamental mistake. Happiness is something that you are, and it comes from the way you think.
I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness, or my family, or the love of my life. That's a mistake. And I think a lot of people make that mistake, they're always kind of, like, seeking out the next thing that's gonna happen.
One might talk about the sanity of the atom the sanity of space the sanity of the electron the sanity of water- For it is all alive and has something comparable to that which we call sanity in ourselves. The only oneness is the oneness of sanity.
(...)normalcy is an illusion. Each person is utterly unique. A standard of normalcy is something that most people of the world simply will never access.
Was this normalcy-predictable patterns, the certainty of doing the same thing everyday? Because if so, normalcy was about to make me freak out and start screaming.
Often you find actors have big hearts; they're quite emotional people. Talking to actors who date other actors, and talking to people who deal with other actors, they often get emotionally caught up in lots of different things. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves. They feel things quite a lot - often to the nth degree, which I can imagine could make it quite difficult to date some of us. I think it's about having an emotional availability that you can kind of draw on. But I'm also searching for that. I'll be searching for the answer to that question for the rest of my life.
Searching for money, what are you really searching? You are searching power, you are searching strength. Searching for prestige, political authority, what are you searching? You are searching power, strength - and strength is all the time available just by the corner. You are searching in wrong places.
It's mainly about working hard and proving to people you're serious about it, and stretching yourself and learning. The mistake a lot of actors make, particularly young ones, is allowing themselves to feel that they're the finished articles, the bee's knees, and it's not true.
Most unhappy people need to learn just one lesson: how to see themselves through the lens of genuine compassion, and treat themselves accordingly.
If I make a mistake and finish 10th when we should have finished ninth, then I will be unhappy.
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.
Things don't make you unhappy. People don't make you unhappy. You make yourself unhappy. Because you are in the cycle. You're stuck. You're stuck in time.
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.
From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves.
Drama's unhappy, and playing someone unhappy would make me unhappy.
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