Peter Shaffer Quotes
Peter Shaffer presents a contemplative view on tragedy, morality and the journey of artistic creation.
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The men climb the Andes.
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Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.
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If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.
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Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.
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What use, after all, is man, if not to teach God His lessons?
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Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that. I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist.
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Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.
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They look so expectant, and then they look so depressed... that was the other great lesson that The Royal Hunt of the Sun taught me, it was the profundity that masked drama can achieve, that of course, the audience were not seeing masks moving at all.
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I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. I don't think I ever had a single discussion with my parents about faith. It was just something gently imposed.
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Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.
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The conquistadors and their followers were very rough people, and they were fixated on gold and silver. They were oblivious to the astonishing achievements of the Inca civilisation.
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We... our war began September the 3rd 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and thereafter the great state of danger in England at that time, with the bombings, necessitated the evacuation of children.
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What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over, does it?
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It's an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him... he never bores me, and he doesn't... not only bore me, that's too strong a word.
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The Devil isn’t made by what Mommy says, or what Daddy says. The Devil is there.
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I think I did have fantasies about being an actor. In fact, I know I did.