Welcome to our collection of captivating curtain quotes! Curtains not only serve a functional purpose in our homes, offering privacy and controlling light, but they also add a touch of style and personality to our living spaces. Whether you’re drawn to luxurious drapes framing a grand window or prefer the simplicity of sheer panels billowing in the breeze, curtains have a unique way of transforming a room’s ambiance.
Throughout history, curtains have been used as symbols of wealth, elegance, and even mystery. From the opulent tapestries adorning the palaces of kings to the humble yet cozy curtains in a country cottage, these fabric adornments have woven themselves into the fabric of our lives, both literally and metaphorically. Join us as we explore the beauty, symbolism, and inspiration behind curtains through the words of poets, authors, designers, and more. Discover quotes that evoke the magic of curtains and their ability to enhance the atmosphere of any space. So, without further ado, let’s draw back the curtain and unveil the wisdom and creativity encapsulated in these captivating curtain quotes!
I always liked the magic of poetry but now I’m just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they’ve used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there. David Knopfler
My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down. T. S. Eliot
My decorating and renovation skills are nil – indeed, I once used a shower curtain from Pottery Barn as ‘window dressing.’ Candace Bushnell
I had a jeep made up for Michael, and he would take it on tour, and he would hide behind it, like a curtain. Rick Dees
It’s always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I’ve always preferred to go straight through. Twyla Tharp
Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star. Lucy Maud Montgomery
I love telling stories, whether I’m the human instrument that helps tell that story, or I’m the man behind the curtain. Ray McKinnon
I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain – that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep. Mike White
To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain. Henry David Thoreau
It’s strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn’t even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s. Jeff Dunham
When I served in the Army, along the Iron Curtain we had a word for a person who absconds with information and provides it to another nation: traitor. We also had a name for a person who chooses to reveal secrets he had personally promised to protect: common criminal. Mike Pompeo
There’s the fatigue that you have to forget about, because the red curtain still has to rise. Mireille Mathieu
A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. Virginia Woolf
Walking out of that curtain and watching the reaction of the crowd, who may cheer for or boo you, is a kick. It’s addictive and helps us put smiles on children’s faces by being huge role models for young girls and boys. Mandy Rose
People look at me and go, ‘You must have it made. You have girls. You have a great life.’ It’s not true. I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I’m just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know. John Stamos
Eudora Welty’s ‘A Curtain of Green’ had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected. Barry Unsworth
I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain. Che Guevara
The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again. Mark Fisher
Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third. Sarah Bernhardt
Hurried and worried until we’re buried, and there’s no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all. George M. Cohan
It’s nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere – on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement. Ben Brantley
But Nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it, and must play it till the curtain falls. Edwin Booth
Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain. Douglas Horton
With Trixie, people like that I look like this fabricated painted creation, but all my comedy and my songs come from a place of reality. It’s like the man behind the curtain – it’s the crying clown – that’s what works for people with Trixie. It’s the dichotomy of someone looking like a toy but then, you know, speaking and singing like a real boy. Trixie Mattel
One of the ideas that was developed at MIT in a workshop was, imagine this pipe, and you’ve got valves, solenoid valves, taps, opening and closing. You create like a water curtain with pixels made of water. If those pixels fall, you can write on it: you can show patterns, images, text. Carlo Ratti
When you live in a small town behind the Pine Curtain, you live inside your head a lot. Joe R. Lansdale
We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race. Mikhail Gorbachev
My parents had a six floor warehouse on Curtain Road called Cordy House between 2004 and 2007 where we had some of the most banging and memorable London parties. Miquita Oliver
I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work. Bob Dylan
In these times of the ‘Great Recession’, we shouldn’t be trying to shift the benefits of wealth behind some curtain. We should be celebrating and encouraging people to make as much money as they can. Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don’t. I find it patriotic. Mark Cuban
I’ll give you my worst nightmare. I’m dreaming that I’m onstage, the curtain goes up, and I have no idea what my lines are or what’s going on. I think I should know, I kind of know, I remember rehearsing… and the audience is there waiting. Jackie Earle Haley
What’s exciting is there’s a curtain that divides the audience from this other world. You want to see behind. Matthew Macfadyen
No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way are revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless. Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets. George Washington Carver
This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible. Natan Sharansky
I think the idea of ‘Mary Poppins’ has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life. P. L. Travers
The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15. Robert Caro
How much cooler was Oz than seeing the little dude behind the curtain? Emile Hirsch
The horrors of the Second World War, the chilling winds of the Cold War and the crushing weight of the Iron Curtain are little more than fading memories. Ideals that once commanded great loyalty are now taken for granted. Jan Peter Balkenende
When running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals – runs on the bank, so to speak – that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year. Mitchell Zuckoff
He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain – no matter what – after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods. Kate Chopin
You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it, you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. John Wesley Powell
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Winston Churchill
The ghastly thing about being a producer is that, once the curtain goes up, there is nothing you can do. At least when you are in it, you have some measure of control. If something goes wrong, you can maybe put it right. When you are in the audience, there is nothing you can do. Kate O’Mara
The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable. Martha Gellhorn
When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our ‘colorblind’ society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure – the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate. Michelle Alexander
Funny is not a color. Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone. Flip Wilson
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it. E. B. White
I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal. P. J. O’Rourke
One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet’s curtain calls is the Royal Ballet’s dancing. Clive Barnes
There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I’m used to traveling. It’s not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It’s the curtain coming up on another act. James Salter
That’s kind of fuse for the show – those first 10-15 seconds you’re onstage. The curtain drops and you see the crowd for the first time and they see you for the first time. The response and the energy that’s going on right there – to me, that sets the tone for the rest of the night. Jason Aldean
It was the Victorians who covered the piano legs and drew a heavy curtain over what a lady got up to in her boudoir. Laurie Graham
For one thing, I would like to see some new faces in all sports associations. Often you have the same people controlling a sport. They may change their designations or they may be controlling affairs from behind the curtain even when they don’t have any role officially. P. T. Usha
I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I’ll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence. Ian Mcewan
In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered. Herbie Hancock
With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them. Maurice Jarre
We didn’t know anything about comedy duos – Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis – we didn’t know anything about that. Kim Fields showed us a tape of Martin and Lewis and their old shows and they come through the curtain so we started doing research on them. Kel Mitchell
Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread. Bethany McLean
I don’t display my plaques and honors. They are hidden behind a black curtain in my work room at home. John Cameron
But scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout the four decades of the Cold War. Joseph Rotblat
Before the Berlin Wall came down, we played behind the Iron Curtain and sang, ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ and I thought, ‘We’re all going to die. The man is going to get us all killed.’ But then you saw all these kids with the American flag and German flags together and singing the song, and it was, wow, like ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Clarence Clemons
I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up. Groucho Marx
‘West Wing’ was huge. Like ‘Hamilton,’ it pulls back the curtain on how decision-making happens at the highest level, or at least how you hope it would be. The amount of information Aaron Sorkin packs into a scene gave me this courage to trust the audience to keep up. Lin-Manuel Miranda
I never went to business school. I was just bumbling through a lot of my life. I was like the guy behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. David Geffen
I always stayed for the first curtain call and people always said, ‘Who’s that?’ But this got me started in acting. James Stewart
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house. Maria Callas
I want to remove the curtain of pretence from all of my characters. Vikrant Massey
The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. Jamal Khashoggi
One blob of red in the wrong place and the audience isn’t looking at the hero, they’re looking at a patch of curtain (or something similar) and your whole effect is lost. Terence Fisher
Yes, there is plenty of hard work for them in addition to that which they do when they appear, smiling and happy, when the curtain goes up. Giving a performance is the least of their worries. Florenz Ziegfeld
Surprisingly, the Eisenhower Memorial design contains almost none of the known Gehry-box of tricks. His giant etched chain-link curtain, first applied in 1979 to hide an ungracious parking garage at Santa Monica Place, is resurrected for Eisenhower to screen the equally graceless facade of the Department of Education. Leon Krier
When the curtain falls, the best thing an actor can do is to go away. Harold MacMillan
When we went on the air, I didn’t want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain. Norman Lear
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Walland the lifting of the iron curtain, troublespots abound: the Middle East and parts of Africa lack a stable regional security architecture; in east Asia, nationalist tendencies and competing ambitions are threatening peace and stability in the region and beyond. Frank-Walter Steinmeier
There are simple, small things you can do that really will impact the space. Things like changing out your curtain panels to something that adds a fresh new feel. Or maybe a smart pattern. Also swapping out an area rug, throws and pillows can be done in no time, and really have a dramatic effect. Drew Scott
I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children. Malala Yousafzai
Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain – there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up – and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It’s a complete experience. Eli Wallach
I was a rabid ‘Seinfeld’ fan. Then I did the show, and it ruined the show for me. Not that it ruined the quality of the show, but I had seen behind the curtain at Oz. W. Earl Brown
I’ve been singing properly every day since I was about fifteen or sixteen, and I have never had any problems with my voice, ever. I’ve had a sore throat here and there, had a cold and sung through it, but that day it just went while I was onstage in Paris during a radio show. It was literally like someone had pulled a curtain over it. Adele
The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever. Robert Gottlieb
Ke$ha is her art; there is no curtain you peel back to find the real person. And with Ke$ha, you never know what to expect when you’re in the studio. Benny Blanco
Anybody who’s done standup will tell you that there’s nothing like it. The show starts at 8:00, the curtain goes up and there’s nobody else except you and the audience, and you just perform for them for two hours. Nobody yells, ‘Cut!’ There are no retakes. That is still the most exciting medium for me, and I love it. Denis Leary
There are two sighs of relief every night in the life of an opera manager. The first comes when the curtain goes up The second sigh of relief comes when the final curtain goes down without any disaster, and one realizes, gratefully, that the miracle has happened again. Rudolf Bing
When Joan Rivers walked through the curtain on ‘The Tonight Show,’ nobody in my house was allowed to utter a sound. Her gait was full of pep and purpose and her voice unmatched. Judy Gold
I am a witness to nations and people deprived of their freedom. I was there. I watched that great Iron Curtain drop around nations which formerly had prized their freedom – good people. I was aghast as these were written off by the stroke of a pen. Ezra Taft Benson
Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart. Rainer Maria Rilke
You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you’re in another world. Robert Caro
Why do we need to wait until somebody sells 10 million records to give people a show like that? What about us smaller, hungry folk? At least gimme a curtain! Angie Stone
Believe me, it jabs you. When you’re on the side of buses and New York loves you, you love to go out there every night. It’s like a race. Curtain opens, out you go, and New York is yours. Angela Lansbury
The first thing I do when I walk into a hotel is find the gym, and if they don’t have a gym, I start looking for a handhold where I can do my pull-ups. Sometimes if a shower curtain rod is sturdy enough, I’ll do them there. Dean Karnazes
I don’t want to live in a militarised country behind an iron curtain. It’s boring. Been there and seen the movie. I’ve done that. Dmitry Medvedev
Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy’s, the Actors’ Chapel on New York’s 49th Street, peal the tune of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’ If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway. Dan Stevens
Curtain! Fast music! Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good, the show looks good! Florenz Ziegfeld
When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I don’t like when actors go around and talk a ton about how they approach their roles, because it’s a little like pulling the curtain back on Oz, for me. Jim Parrack
You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people’s interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain. Jay Roach
My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don’t feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn. Chuck Palahniuk
I’ve had some of the best craft services on independent movies, actually, because they get more creative, generally, with a smaller budget. The work is still the same. I didn’t really notice the difference other than I was getting dressed behind a curtain, basically. Jennifer Beals
I was in the Rockin’ Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain. A lot of photos were taken of us next to milk churns. Lemmy
My eyes don’t work, at least not fully, because they are blocked by disease. The scene around me appears through a kind of curtain, a haze. Henry Grunwald
