Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm interested in the real world.
Shakespeare has no answers for us at all
I'm not interested in an imaginary world
You have to learn the language of Hamlet.
I'm not interested in an imaginary world.
Shakespeare has no answers for us at all.
I think there is no world without theatre.
The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks
The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks.
The one overall structure in my plays is language
The truth has got to appear plausible on the stage
The one overall structure in my plays is language.
You have to go to the ultimate situation in drama.
Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.
The truth has got to appear plausible on the stage.
It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.
In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice
But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.
In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice.
It seems to me that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves
It seems to me that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves.
The Greeks said very, very extreme things in their tragedies.
Law and order is one of the steps taken to maintain injustice.
At the turn of the century theatre does not have to be prescriptive.
If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond.
Whatever the economy needs to maintain itself, the government will do it.
What I try to do in a play is put a problem on stage, head-on, without evasion.
It's insulting to ask a dramatist what his view of his play is. I have no opinion
The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.
Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human
It's insulting to ask a dramatist what his view of his play is. I have no opinion.
Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human.
In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.
We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.
We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.
Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.
Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done.
The human mind is a dramatic structure in itself and our society is absolutely saturated with drama
The human mind is a dramatic structure in itself and our society is absolutely saturated with drama.
What Shakespeare and the Greeks were able to do was radically question what it meant to be a human being.
Violence is never a solution in my plays, just as ultimately violence is never a solution in human affairs.
Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.
When humanness is lost the radical difference between the bodies in the pit and people walking on the street is lost.
Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.
Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society.
I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.
As Shakespeare himself knew, the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not last an hour on the street.
First there was the theatre of people and animals, then of people and the devil. Now we need the theatre of people and people.
It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas
It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.