Quote #20

No other comedian could do as much with the dead-pan. He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things; a one track mind near the track's end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive; an awe-inspiring sort of patience and power to endure, proper to granite but uncanny in flesh and blood.

More from Buster Keaton

  1. He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply 'silent' of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of k…
  2. Perhaps because 'dry' comedy is so much more rare and odd than 'dry' wit, there are people that never much cared for Keaton. Those who do c…
  3. Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.
  4. The older Keaton got, the more one could see eternity in his look.
  5. The moment you give me a locomotive and things like that to play with, as a rule I find some way of getting laughs with it.
  6. The screen was just a white sheet. They had this flickering machine. That was the first time I saw this angel with a white face and these b…
  7. The camera can't catch my blushes!
  8. I could tell you that those wonderful stories were 90% Buster's... I was often ashamed to take the money, much less the credit.

All Buster Keaton quotes