English - Dramatist | July 3, 1937 -
James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
Tom Stoppard
ManIndifferenceWhoNoticePublic
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
TheatreBackLittlePlanetDifferent
I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
WorkFreedomDictatorshipWantJail
My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next play or, ideally, into it.
LifeI AmPreparationMy LifeWeek
As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.
YouExpertWithoutOwnHoldAgainst
I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why.
MyselfLookingTryingHopelessWhy
When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.
ThinkFeelShellsOutThingsJust
Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it.
ChallengeWritingMysteryPlayNew
One senses that all the Bolsheviks, even those who ended up as cold-blooded autocrats, had been on a journey from idealism to something else, and didn't notice - to mix periods - when the Rubicon was crossed.
JourneyUpSomethingBeenSenses
My brain cells are dying in their trillions.
BrainDyingCellsBrain Cells
When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process.
MusicWritingProcessYouKindHead
I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.
MeBelieveMoralPsychologySeem
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