I've been very fortunateit's just been an amazing piece of luck. I haven't had to suffer for my art but I've suffered enough inside to hopefully be called an artist.
Interpretation
The quote expresses gratitude for good fortune in one's artistic journey while acknowledging inner struggles that contribute to artistic identity.
Christopher Plummer highlights the duality of being an artist: the external luck that can aid in a successful career, contrasted with the internal challenges and emotional experiences that shape one's artistry. While he recognizes that he has not faced significant external hardships, he implies that the internal suffering is what lends authenticity and depth to his work as an artist, making his experiences all the more meaningful.
In practice
This quote can be used during an art exhibition to discuss the role of luck and emotional experiences in artistic expression.
I was always a happy kid. I'd play the piano fairly well. I did all sorts of things fairly well. But who the hell wants to be happy all the time? It's a miserable state to be in permanently. Can you imagine how dreary that would be?
A lot of people want to retire; I couldn't. You don't retire in our business. What, play golf and watch television? Oh, please.
I think anger does fuel a successful acting career. To play the great roles, you have to learn how to blaze.
Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.
I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.
For me, style is about quality, integrity and timelessness. It is free of trends but always feels fresh and new.
You try to be as original as you can be without thinking about statistics. You just go from the soul and from the heart.
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.
To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them.
All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
Ten years before its time, a fashion is indecent; ten years after, it is hideous; but a century after, it is romantic.
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