There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
Mike NicholsRead
A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of a play lies in its ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.
Mike Nichols emphasizes that a play is essentially a mystery, devoid of direct narration, which invites audiences to interpret it in various ways. This openness to interpretation is not just a possibility but a necessity, as each play can evoke different meanings and emotions for different viewers, enriching the experience of theater.
Themes
TheaterInterpretationArtMysteryPlays
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a theater workshop to encourage discussion about interpretation.
More from Mike Nichols
All quotes →You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
Mike NicholsRead
The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
Mike NicholsRead
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
Mike NicholsRead
Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Mike NicholsRead
Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they come and see it and say, 'That's nice', and then they go home.
Mike NicholsRead
Similar quotes
I don't feel there are enough women artists out there who are saying anything of tremendous relevance.
Annie LennoxRead
The fundamental aspect of video is not the image, even though you can stand in amazement at what can be done electronically, how images can be manipulated and the really extraordinary creative possibilities. For me the essential basis of video is the movement - something that exists at the moment and changes in the next moment.
Bill ViolaRead
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
Harold PrinceRead
You know, be an actor because you love to act. Don't be an actor because you think you're going to get famous, because that's luck.
Whoopi GoldbergRead
A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.
Ian McewanRead
I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don't think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
Steve MartinRead