What spoken theatre expresses in two hours can be said by the mimic theatre in two minutes.
— Marcel Marceau
Mime is the art of creating the illusion of reality.
— Claude Kipnis
Life is a cycle, and mime is particularly suitable for showing fluidity, transformation, metamorphosis. Words can keep people apart; mime can be a bridge between them.
— Marcel Marceau
The gesture must constantly vibrate and breathe. Even the motionless attitude in space must emit this aura, this contact which establishes itself between the actor and the public, and which we call magnetic exchange.
— Marcel Marceau
A spoken sentence has inflection, rhythm, force. So must a movement. Mime would want to have the same domain as diction: departure point, pause, return, with the full range of subtle dynamic energies that give life to punctuation.
— Etienne Decroux