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.
Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.
There are lot of people who speak about superstardom, but I'd like to say that it's not about any individual - it's about the opportunity.
We overestimate the event and underestimate the process. Every fulfilled dream occurred because of dedication to the process.
Great players never look in the mirror and think I'm a great basketball player. You ask yourself, Am I the best player I can be?
There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.
As long as we place millions of Indians at the canter of our thought process, as long as we think of their welfare, their future, their opportunities for self realization we are on the right track. For India can grow, prosper, flourish only if they grow, prosper, flourish. We cannot grow by any esoteric strategies. Our purchasing power, our economic strength, our marketplace all depends on the prosperity of our people.
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