"At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm."

Previous Quote

You reminded me of a quote that my acting teacher Stella Adler wrote in her book ['The Art of Acting'], which I asked her to sign: "The young actor feels some greatness inside themselves that they want to give back to the world." That resonated with me, but I didn't really understand what she was talking about until much later, in the way you surmised that my struggle to become an actor was from being this kind of introverted young boy.

— Mark Ruffalo