Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.
The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy.
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It’s the failure of diplomacy. ‘War and Peace,’ ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
I’m responding to the will of the people.
You got an all-out prize fight, you wait ’til the fight’s over, one guy’s left standing and that’s how you know who’s won.
Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
All rhetorical questions are accusations.
I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.
Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.
Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as “real life,” do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.
They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.
My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn’t know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer – a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer – and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.
Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He’s taken an imperial view of the presidency.
I’ve been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When ‘American Buffalo’ came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, ‘How dare he use that kind of language!’ Of course I’m alienating the public! That’s what they pay me for.
I didn’t knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, ‘Wow, I don’t understand what this guy’s talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.’
My definition of a ‘friend’ is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, ‘Yeah, sure. You know what? Let’s talk about what we can talk about. Let’s help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.’
I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.
You can’t rely on the acting to tell the story.
The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.
The true writer must write not the acceptable but the true.