Top 56 Burlesque Quotes & Sayings

Heroics that don't come off are the very essence of burlesque.

I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.

I've always had a love affair with New York City, and I've threatened to get an apartment there one day. But it just made sense for me to set 'Burlesque' on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. It's a place I know intimately well and love, and I think there's a great story to be told with L.A.

When I started performing, there was no Internet; I didn't really have anything to copy. I kind of had to just make up what I thought burlesque was, based on photographs of Sally Rand or whatever.

Bip is the romantic and burlesque hero for our time. Bip is a modern-day Don Quixote.

Burlesque dancing didn't solve all my post-divorce problems, but what it did do was force me to court myself for a little while.

The reason I started drag in the first place is because I felt like I never really fit in, and I still don't feel like I fit in to any of those places: the drag world, the circus world or the burlesque world. I'm kinda this combination of everything, so it made sense to me that I'd set out to do my own solo show.

I want to be a successful trans woman burlesque performer.

The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice--although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.

My solo show, 'A Lot More Me,' is part drag show, part burlesque show, part circus show, and part fashion show.

I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business!

Some of the pictures I must say every now and then I just think are going to be funny. When it gets that much, you might as well just pull out all the stops and make it more of a burlesque.

There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.

Look, I come from vaudeville, I come from burlesque, I come from heartaches, I come from sadness, I come from gladness, I come from work and sweat and respect for the craft.

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

My mother worked in the old Minsky's troupe, which toured the country in the golden age of burlesque theatre.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

There is nudity, of course striptease is an essential component of burlesque but it's much more complex and intelligent than a display of nudity for nudity itself. And its often laugh-out-loud funny.

I know my comfort zone and I know what my strong points are and my first love was always music. I'm a huge cinema fan. I was taking my time; I got offered a lot of scripts and things along the way but until Burlesque showed up at my doorstep, it really spoke to me. I have a collection of burlesque books at home that I've had for years. I've always been intrigued and fascinated with the topic, the beauty and the art of it and the comedic value of it. I think it's just a beautiful, empowering thing for women.

I am not an educated person. I didn't come up through a ballet company. I came up through burlesque. So I have a lot of inferiority feelings concerning my own lack of education, my entry into show business. I'm not a Baryshnikov. I'm not a Nureyev. I came up in vaudeville. Strippers. So I've always had these feelings. But I think they've also helped me.

It was noted long ago that the front row of burlesque houses was occupied predominantly by bald-headed men. In fact, such a row became known as the bald-headed row. It might be assumed from this on statistical evidence that the continued close observation of chorus girls in tights caused loss of hair from the top of the head.

I've been involved in burlesque for a really long time and I've always been really interested in burlesque, and I was writing musicals for different studios.

In the drag community it's mostly women in the audience, even for burlesque. I think people look at strippping as a male gaze thing and I think the actual neo-classical burlesque community is more about women supporting women and their creativity, along with freedom of expression.

Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.

Art is no longer snobbish or cowardly. It teaches peasants to use tractors, gives lyrics to young soldiers, designs textiles for factory women's dresses, writes burlesque for factory theatres, does a hundred other useful tasks. Art is as usueful as bread.

There have been a lot of roles and scripts that have come my way but nothing that really inspired me or intrigued me like when "Burlesque" showed up at my door. Just the whole concept of burlesque, I've always been fascinated with it. I've always collected so many books about burlesque. I've been intrigued by the time that it's set in, in the 20's, 30's, 40's and so I knew it was a no brainer for me to be a part of once I met with the team.

It just seemed fitting to have our own lounge with our own dance review that paid homage to where The Pussycat Dolls originated, ... So it wasn't just another nightclub. It was somewhere where people can go and see an old school show with real dancing and real performing and real singing. It's perfect for Vegas. It's got that whole cabaret, burlesque-inspired review of dancing, and the whole fishnets, and boas.

I have this fantasy that the second movie would begin with a brief statement by all of the young actors who had played the children in the first movie, explaining how it had ruined their lives, so we would catch up with Emily Browning drinking heavily in the back of a burlesque bar, and maybe Liam Aiken would be living underneath a bridge, and then instead of the twins who played Sunny, we would just try to find the oldest woman in the world, and get an interview with her sitting in a trailer park.

King René of Anjou [(1409-80)]was a strange compound of amiable, great and trifling qualities. He was so excellent a sovereign as to acquire the surnom of the Good. He was brave in war, delighted in tournaments and wrote on them, instituted festivals and processions, partly religious and partly burlesque, was a fond husband, a romantic lover, a good painter for that age, and a true philosopher.

On the first album, we were trying to do a pop-punk album with a classical influence. We'd say 'pop-punk,' and people would say, 'No, you're like burlesque-cabaret-punk,' or, 'It's baroque-pop,' and we were like, 'That sounds way cooler.'

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

The desire to express in an art form and to compose a tableau and vignette whether it's humorous, burlesque, or poetic comes simply from a desire to compose an image for cinema. It is not my fault that when I go to Ramallah there is a checkpoint and therefore it enters my film. Tell me a way to avoid that politicized image. The fact is that the police are everywhere, the army everywhere and occupation is total. Whether it's a love story or a thriller, you place the camera and these realities will cross the frame.

A burlesque word is often a powerful sermon.

Every one of my products - my lingerie, my perfume, and everything that I do beauty-related with regard to building my burlesque shows - is just me.

Burlesque is beautiful: It's art, it's fun, it's done with a lot of comedy - an awful lot of big wink-wink and nudge-nudge.

What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other; as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer. For the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint.

Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and the real golden age of burlesque, those entertainers were there to entertain, and there wasn't usually some big political message behind what they were doing.

If you ever saw All That Jazz [1979], Bob Fosse was kind of raised dancing in strip joints and the whole era of burlesque, and that form ran his visual aesthetic, the pacing and rhythm of what he did.

I was performing in this burlesque group, and we would go to dance rehearsals every day. You'd use every part of your body. Even though some of it is slow, it takes a lot of muscle to be able to dip down and come back up.

When I was a kid at 16, sneaking into a burlesque theater in downtown Detroit was a big thrill. Today, in every hotel room in America, you can turn on the television and see hardcore pornography. So the shifts can go both ways, and it's incumbent on us as leaders of the spiritual community to get as many people as possible to really begin to think in God-realized ways.

I love burlesque. I'm a decent aerialist. I think I set myself apart visually.

Classic burlesque in the style of Gypsy which many modern burlesque troupes practice is, at its core, so playful and teasing and innocent. It's not hardcore stripping so much as letting your body tell a story; the women are playing characters and unfolding a complete narrative onstage, with beginning, middle, and end.

Objectivity is almost a choice you make. As a burlesque performer, I didn't choose to be objectified.

Just the whole concept of burlesque, I've always been fascinated with it. I've always collected so many books about burlesque.

Burlesque girls were alchemists. They were steel-tough performers who were willing to use kitchens as dressing rooms, haul their costume bags through the snow, and go into debt over fake diamonds, all for the five minutes onstage when they were goddesses.

It was a great challenge to reconstruct Gypsy Rose Lee life, and my interviews with her sister [June Havoc] proved invaluable. It's not often that writers have access to living primary source material; this was the only person who experienced life on the vaudeville circuit with Gypsy during the 1920s, and who saw her perform at Minsky's Burlesque in the 1930s. She knew things that no one else could ever possibly know.

Her sister [June Havoc] said the musical portrayed who Gypsy [Rose Lee] wanted to be before the burlesque thing happened she wanted to be this beautiful, romantic person with dreams. So Gypsy told the story of her life as she wished she'd lived it: embellishing, softening the edges, eliminating certain things altogether.

There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.

Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this.

In the early '90s, it was grunge; everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore makeup, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque; suddenly they're the biggest band in the world.

I actually had a movie green lit at Disney the same week 'Burlesque' was green lit - a movie for Disney called 'Mash-Up', about a high school marching band.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.

I'd done drag since I was 14, for special occasions, and in 2010 a friend of mine with her own burlesque group was looking for a host. During a party I was just fooling around, taking the microphone, saying stupid, funny things, and she asked me afterward if I wanted to host her burlesque show every Saturday.

Pie throwing is kind of a lost art, and although it may be a rather rudimentary, burlesque humor, there's something inherently funny about taking a pie in the face, under the right conditions.