David Hare Quotes

David Hare serves sharp theatre insights, probing history, mindset and communication.

31 quotes

1. The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.

2. The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

3. A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity. A strong and deep mind has two highest tides - when the moon is at the full, and when there is no moon.

4. Children always turn toward the light.

5. In oratory the will must predominate.

6. None but a fool is always right.

7. Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth.

8. Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.

9. Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature.

10. Purity is the feminine, Truth the masculine, of Honour.

11. Smiles are the language of love.

12. Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.

13. Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate little else than the changeableness of the weather.

14. The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience.

15. The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.

16. Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail.

17. To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.

18. 'Via Dolorosa' is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and I'll never act again.

19. Via Dolorosa is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and Ill never act again.

20. I'm trying to write something in which you know that it's all about sex but you never see any.

21. Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

22. Trying to be a socialist and a libertarian is obviously a very difficult balancing act, which nobody has pulled off too successfully in this century.

23. I actually think love changes everything. I think it's the only thing worth having.

24. When you get older, then you feel death not at the end of the road, but death all around you, in everything. Life is saturated with death. I feel death everywhere.

25. My father always said 'There's no free lunch.' My father was right. There's no free lunch and there's no free market. The market is rigged, the market is always rigged, and the rigging is in favour of the people who run the market. That's what the market is. It's a bent casino. The house always wins.

26. Surely our job while we're here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

27. I have a very, very good relationship with 10 percent of the audience. The only purpose of art is intimacy. That's the only point.

28. Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

29. One of the depressing things in England is the total orthodoxy: the law is handed down from Downing Street.

30. Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.

31. I believe love opens people up.