Marcel Marceau

“In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.”

“With time, art developed Bip, my alter ego. He was not only a lion tamer or a street musician but a soldier revealing the tragedy of ephemeral life.”

“To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.”

“I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.”

“Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?”

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

“Today, my heart and soul lives peacefully for the hope that the 21st century will have to face a great challenge, a peaceful struggle for the enlightenment of humanity.”

“All wars are criminal.”

“There is only one Marceau.”

“It's good to shut up sometimes.”

“In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.”

“Silence in the turmoil of the theater world made me survive 50 years without speaking on a stage, only to say 'No' in Mel Brooks' film, 'Silent Movie.'”

“What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.”

“I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.”

“I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.”

“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.”

“I don't want our youth to become anti-romantic. We have to make room for the soul.”

“I have never been a victim of antisemitism - if you put to one side my war-time experience. That said, I am lucky not to have been sent into a concentration camp.”

“I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.”

“Dance is in the air, pirouettes, very difficult. Mime is on the floor, like Spanish dancing perhaps, and very often in slow motion.”