What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.
Interpretation
Shaw illustrates the powerful impact of well-written dialogue in theater.
In this quote, George Bernard Shaw conveys that each line in his plays is crafted with precision and intense purpose, similar to a bullet fired from a revolver. This metaphor suggests that the dialogue is dynamic and has the potential to leave a strong impression on the audience, highlighting the importance of impactful writing in performing arts.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of dramatic arts, one could quote Shaw to emphasize the power of words.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move.
Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.
Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.
In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations.
I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.
I am part of a light, and it is the music. The Light fills my six senses: I see it, hear, feel, smell, touch and think. Thinking of it means my sixth sense. Particles of Light are written note. A bolt of lightning can be an entire sonata. A thousand balls of lightening is a concert.. For this concert I have created a Ball Lightning, which can be heard on the icy peaks of the Himalayas.
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