Words from the Wise…
This section is still under construction, but here are a few quotes about writing, theatre and life to start things off - and if you have any favourites, sent them to me!
"The playwright is almost always held accountable for failure, and that is almost always a just verdict." (Lillian Hellman)
"A writer writes. That's all there is to it." (Edmund Wilson)
"Theatre often does function as therapy, both for its originators and for its recipients, but that isn't what it's for, and to claim otherwise is self-indulgence." (Robert Cushman, The National Post, 2005)
"A good play is a good thought; a great play is a great thought. A great thought is a thrust outward, a daring act. Daring is the essence. Its very nature is incompatible with undue affection for moderation, respectability, even fairness and responsibleness. Those qualities are proper for the inside of the telephone company, not for the creative act." (Arthur Miller)
"Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher…One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose." (Ecclesiastes.)
A vigilant reader well-versed in Biblical literature has since informed me that no such quote exists. This quote is from a biography of Maxwell Perkins, who is quoting Hemingway. Aas, Hemingway was close but no Havana cigar on this one. But I like the Hemingway rewrite, so I'm keeping it...
"If they believe the critics when they say they are great then they must believe them when they say they are rotten and they lose confidence. At present we have two good writers who cannot write because they have lost confidence through reading critics. If they wrote, sometimes it would be good and sometimes it would be quite bad, but the good would get out. But they have read the critics and they must write masterpieces. The masterpieces the critics said they wrote. They weren't masterpieces, of course. They were just quite good books. So now they can't write at all." (Ernest Hemingway, in Green Hills of Africa.)
"An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to an author. Don't ever get to feeling important about yourself, because an editor at most releases energy. He creates nothing." (Maxwell Perkins, on novel-editing, but equally applicable to dramaturgy.)
"There are no happy endings." (Aunt Joan)
Because ignorance is sad but willful ignorance is a sin, I was pleased to find this:
"You see the intellect - but you know longer care about it. That, I call stupidity." (Ernst Schlegel, in Howards End by E.M. Forster)