Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing.
Arthur MillerRead
A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the struggles and sacrifices a playwright faces in a restrictive environment.
Arthur Miller's quote highlights the challenges that artists, particularly playwrights, encounter while creating work in a society filled with oppression or conflict. The metaphor of living in an 'occupied country' suggests that the playwright must navigate through external pressures and limitations that stifle creativity and expression, and it implies that a true artist will either adapt to this reality or choose to leave such an environment behind.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of artistic freedom.
Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing.
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story.
Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.
Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak to the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind.
The ultimate goal of the architect...is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earthly paradise for people.
Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.
American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
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