Theodore Bikel

It's a sad thing to contemplate, but I'm the last surviving cast member of 'The African Queen.'

I am first, and foremost, an actor. That's what I am. To me, a song is a mini-drama. My musical ability informs the actor as well because it gives me a sense of timing that non-musicians don't have. So, one hand washes the other.

You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that is truer in the arts than anywhere else.

I glory in the fact that a human being has multiple talents and exercises them all with a degree of integrity and artistic proficiency. That's what I do.

I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.

In my mind the city of Ariel is a thorn in Israel's side and a serious obstacle to peace.

I am a Zionist, an ardent supporter of Israel, its defender when I deem Israel to be right and its critic when I deem it to be wrong.

No doubt, unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed by mere declarations.

Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route.

One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.

For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.

Every actor wants to direct.

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.

On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.

I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

I always sang, I always acted, I always played.

Audiences are audiences.