In the end, one has to feel lucky that things fell out O.K. I've felt that all the years I've been writing plays.
Interpretation
Success often comes from feeling fortunate about the outcomes of our efforts.
This quote by Tom Stoppard emphasizes the importance of recognizing the fortunate circumstances that contribute to our achievements. While skill and hard work are essential, feeling lucky also plays a crucial role in the creative process and the completion of significant work, such as writing plays. Stoppard reflects on his career with a sentiment of gratitude, suggesting that luck can guide one's journey in the arts.
In practice
In a speech at a writers' conference, reflecting on the unpredictable nature of creative success.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Let us rejoice at the many unexplored fields in which there is unlimited fame and fortune to the successful explorer . . .
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.
I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.
Do you know how many athletes go broke three years after they stop playing? I want to help them hold on to their money. I mean, I know about budgets.
Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.
An athlete must have ability to reach the top, but many who have ability and who do not live clean lives never have and never will be champions for obvious reasons.
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