The financial crisis happened because no-one could actually say out loud how bad things were.

- Mark Ravenhill

Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a way into …

- Mark Ravenhill

Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than som…

- Mark Ravenhill

Twenty years ago, when you bumped into someone and asked how they were, they would say, 'Mustn't grumble' or 'Getting by': now they feel obliged to s…

- Mark Ravenhill

Theatre within theatre, when characters sees themselves on stage, always raises philosophical questions of choice and free will.

- Mark Ravenhill

Voltaire's novel [Candid] offers us parallel universes, the possibility of entering into alternative worlds existing side by side, and this is someth…

- Mark Ravenhill

In the business world, the idea of positive thinking is absolutely entrenched.

- Mark Ravenhill

The title's so upfront. It gives fair warning about the play's content. I'm writing about a kind of disenchantment, an anger, but quite a cool 90's a…

- Mark Ravenhill

There is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming couplets, w…

- Mark Ravenhill