Quotes by Playwrights - Page 111

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.
George Bernard Shaw
Life doesn't exist inside language: too bad for me.
Kathy Acker
Isn't language amazing? I can't get over it. Sometimes you can just say things and its like a bomb that blows all your clothes off and suddenly there you are naked. I don't know if its disgusting or beautiful.
Victor Lodato
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
George Bernard Shaw
The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.
Dennis Potter
I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
Oscar Wilde
I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.
Lord Dunsany
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
W Somerset Maugham
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.
Elfriede Jelinek
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secretsUseless in the darkness into which they peeredOr from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,At best, only a limited valueIn the knowledge derived from experience.The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,For the pattern is new in every momentAnd every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been. We are only undeceivedOf that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
T.S Eliot
Reality lies in the greatest enchantment you have ever experienced.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Something whose connection with human experience we cannot grasp is bound to be frightening.
Kōbō Abe
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.
T.S Eliot
Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky.
Michael Frayn
Experience can never be undone, or knowledge unlearned.
Ronald Frame
If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.
John Heywood
It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul.
Niall Williams
There is no school or teacher more valuable than your own experiences.
Mehmet Murat ildan
Experience is by industry achiev'd,And perfected by the swift course of time.
William Shakespeare
I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.
W Somerset Maugham
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Now most people would put this doon tae experience, ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.
Irvine Welsh
He who has lived and thought can neverHelp in his soul despising men,He who has felt will be foreverHaunted by days he can’t regain.For him there are no more enchantments,Him does the serpent of remembrance,Him does repentance always gnaw.All this will frequently affordA great delight to conversations.
Alexander Pushkin
Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
Tom Stoppard
GLOUCESTERNow, good sir, what are you?EDGARA most poor man made tame to fortune's blows,Who by the art of known and feeling sorrowsAm pregnant to good pity.
William Shakespeare
Experience is a question of instinct about life.
Oscar Wilde
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
George Bernard Shaw
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience - well, that comes from poor judgment.
A.A. Milne
The moon twangs its silver strings;The river swoons into town;The wind beds down in the pines,Covers itself with stars.
George Elliott Clarke
In school, I hated poetry - those skinny,Malnourished poems that professors love;The bad grammar and dirty words that catchIn the mouth like fishhooks, tear holes in speech.Pablo, your words are rain I run through,Grass I sleep in.
George Elliott Clarke
Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.
Federico García Lorca
my subconscious so full it must spill over
Dorothy Hewett
i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt memore than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in thedesert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ hereis what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ &so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/ please this is for you
Ntozake Shange
We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
At childhood’s end, the houses petered outinto playing fields, the factory, allotmentskept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big earshe had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,away from home, to a dark tangled thorny placelit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazersnagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoesbut got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, forwhat little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?Then I slid from between his heavy matted pawsand went in search of a living bird – white dove –which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the backof the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroomstoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birdsare the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolfhowls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axeto a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmonto see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolfas he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all
Carol Ann Duffy
I do not attachany exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life isthere to be lived rather than to be written about. My aimis to search out the manifold experience that it offers,wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishmentwhich does not absorb but rather adds pleasure toexistence. And as for posterity—damn posterity.
W Somerset Maugham
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,Now the sun is laid to sleep,Seated in thy silver chair,State in wonted manner keep:Hesperus entreats thy light,Goddess excellently bright.Earth, let not thy envious shadeDare itself to interpose,Cynthia's shining orb was madeHeaven to clear when day did close:Bless us then with wished sight,Goddess excellently bright.Lay thy bow of pearl apart,And thy crystal-shining quiver,Give unto the flying hartSpace to breath, how short soever:Thou that mak'st a day of night-Goddess excellently bright.
Ben Jonson
More than loud acclaim, I loveBooks, silence, thought, my alcove.Pangur BánPoem by Anon Irish Monk, Translated by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Have you sipped your poems today?
Helvy Tiana Rosa
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Those lips that Love's own hand did makeBreathed forth the sound that said, 'I hate'To me that languished for her sake,But, when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas used in giving gentle doom,And taught it thus anew to greet:'I hate,' she altered with an endThat followed it as gentle dayDoth follow night, who like a fiendFrom Heaven to Hell is flown away.'I hate' from hate away she threwAnd saved my life, saying 'not you'.
William Shakespeare
Never durst a poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink was tempered with love's sighs.
William Shakespeare
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.
T.S Eliot
King John was not a good man,He had his little ways.And sometimes no one spoke to him,For days and days and days.
A.A. Milne
No matter how right or how beautiful your path is, never try to impose your path on others! Remember that flowers by no means pull bees by force to their world! Your path is your poem; if people like your poem, they will fondly join you in your path!
Mehmet Murat ildan
For this,let gardens grow, where beelines end,sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;where bees pray on their knees, sing, praisein pear trees, plum trees; beesare the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.
Carol Ann Duffy
El remanso de airebajo la rama del eco.El remanso del aguabajo fronda de luceros.El remanso de tu bocabajo espesura de besos.*The still waters of the airunder the bough of the echo.The still waters of the waterunder a frond of stars.The still waters of your mouthunder a thicket of k
Federico García Lorca
Do I, then, belong to the heavens?Why, if not so, should the heavensFix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,Luring me on, and my mind, higherEver higher, up into the sky,Drawing me ceaselessly upTo heights far, far above the human?Why, when balance has been strictly studiedAnd flight calculated with the best of reasonTill no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-Why, still, should the lust for ascensionSeem, in itself, so close to madness?Nothing is that can satify me;Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.Why do these rays of reason destroy me?Villages below and meandering streamsGrow tolerable as our distance grows.Why do they plead, approve, lure meWith promise that I may love the humanIf only it is seen, thus, from afar-Although the goal could never have been love, Nor, had it been, could I ever haveBelonged to the heavens?I have not envied the bird its freedomNor have I longed for the ease of Nature,Driven by naught save this strange yearningFor the higher, and the closer, to plunge myselfInto the deep sky's blue, so contraryTo all organic joys, so farFrom pleasures of superiority But higher, and higher,Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescenceOf waxen wings.Or do I then Belong, after all, to the earth?Why, if not so, should the earthShow such swiftness to encompass my fall?Granting no space to think or feel,Why did the soft, indolent earth thusGreet me with the shock of steel plate?Did the soft earth thus turn to steelOnly to show me my own softness?That Nature might bring home to meThat to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,More natural by far than that improbable passion?Is the blue of the sky then a dream?Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxicationAchieved for a moment by waxen wings?And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?To punish me for not believing in myself Or for believing too much;Too earger to know where lay my allegianceOr vainly assuming that already I knew all;For wanting to fly offTo the unknownOr the known:Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?
Yukio Mishima
The little boy was looking for his voice.(The king of the crickets had it.)In a drop of waterthe little boy was looking for his voice.I do not want it for speaking with;I will make a ring of itso that he may wear my silenceon his little fingerIn a drop of waterthe little boy was looking for his voice.(The captive voice, far away,put on a cricket's clo
Federico García Lorca
Commitment is an act, not a word
Jean-Paul Sartre
Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do useful things whenever it is possible or necessary to do them, we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared. Armenians are too vital to be permitted to throw themselves away in neutrality, comfort, well-being, satisfaction, and so on and so forth.
William Saroyan
Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?
Oscar Wilde
Crowds don’t think; they act; they don’t produce ideas, they produce actions!
Mehmet Murat ildan