Daily Inspiration Quote by Kevin Kline

Kline isn’t name-dropping Porter and Gershwin to sound cultured; he’s building an alibi for obsession. The line is an actor’s way of justifying total immersion: if the greats were helpless around a keyboard, then his own compulsion isn’t affectation, it’s lineage. Notice the phrasing: “magnetic pull” turns artistry into physics, something that happens to you rather than something you perform for applause. It’s a clever move for someone whose job is performance. Kline frames his attraction to the piano as involuntary, which subtly protects him from the suspicion that an actor playing a musician is merely borrowing credibility.

There’s also a backstage intimacy to it. “Any piano that was in the room” conjures a social space - a party, a rehearsal hall, a set - where the instrument is both furniture and temptation. The hyperbole “You couldn’t drag them away” isn’t about virtuosity; it’s about appetite. That appetite is what audiences want from portrayals of composers: not just skill, but need. Kline’s subtext is: I’m not approaching Porter as a museum piece. I’m chasing the restless, slightly manic engine behind the songs.

Contextually, invoking Porter and Gershwin signals a particular American myth: early-20th-century geniuses who blurred work and play, craft and flirtation, nightlife and discipline. Kline taps that myth to make artistry feel bodily and social, not sanctified - an impulse that takes over the room.