Playwrights

"I know that back in the twenties everyone who saw it judged John Barrymore's Hamlet to be unforgettable. Great though it was, I found his Richard III even more impressive. Barrymore's sinister, half-mad hunchback became incandescent as he gleefully anticipated his conquest of the Lady Anne. The genius of the actor contrived a slight but inspired alteration of Shakespeare's: 'Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?' The change to 'Never was woman in this manner wooed; never was woman in this manner won' heightened the deviltry in Richard's gloating."

"I always knew children were anti-social. But the children of the West Side - they're savage."

"शेवटी काय हो, आपण पत्त्याच्या नावाचे धनी, मजकुराचा मालक निराळाच."

"झाले ! म्हणजे प्रश्नातून सुटका नाही. माझीच नव्हे, कुणाचीच नाही! मग जगणे म्हणजे नुसते श्वासोच्छ्वास घेणे की लक्ष लक्ष प्रश्नांच्या उत्तरांमागून धावणे? शेवटी प्रश्न म्हणजे तरी काय आणि उत्तर म्हणजे तरी काय? हादेखील एक प्रश्नच. मी त्या प्रश्नचिन्हाकडेच निरखून पाहतो. आणि युरेका! त्या प्रश्नचिन्हातच माझे उत्तर कसल्याशा सांकेतिक भाषेत दडवले आहे हे मला ठाऊक नव्हते. प्रश्नचिन्हाच्या त्या आकड्याखालीच शून्य हे त्याचे उत्तरही असते. विरामिचन्हे इतकी विचारपूर्वक बनवली असतील याची मला कल्पना नव्हती!"

"जगात काय बोलत आहात ह्यापेक्षा कोण बोलत आहात ह्याला जास्त महत्त्व आहे."

"प्रयास हा प्रतिभेचा प्राणवायू आहे."

"लग्नापुर्वी शी न लूक्ड सो … लुकडी!"

"मी लंडन मध्ये हमाली करून वजनी पाउंड घटवून चलनी पाउंड कमवावेत, असही सुचवण्यात आलं."

"परिस्थिति हा अश्रूंचा कारखाना आहे!."

"In his writings, Pu Lu has said that he is afraid of taking a stand against the Government. This was much before the Shiv Sena-BJP Government came into power.... It may well be that he would have been deprived of government patronage - this is something that has happened to others. Or, that he would have been subjected to physical attacks. Yet, the progressives have labelled the present government as fascist, and the previous governments as democratic."

"Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe … I don’t think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul."

"The violence of beast on beast is read As natural law, but upright man Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain."

"I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."

"I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars."

"You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart."

"Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life."

"Then silence is sawn in half by a dragonfly as eels sign their names along the bottom-sand when the sunrise brightens the river's memory and waves of huge ferns are nodding to the sea's sound. Although the smoke forgets the earth from which is ascends and the nettles guard the holes where the laurels were killed an iguana hears the axes, clouding each lens over its lost name, when the hunched island was called 'Iounalao' 'Where it iguana is from' But, taking its own time, the iguana will scale the rigging of vines in a year, its dewlap fanned, its elbows akimbo, its deliberate tail moving with the island. The slit pods of its eyes ripened in a pause that lasted for centuries, that rose with the Aruacs' smoke till a new race unknown to the lizard stood measuring the trees. These were their pillars that fell, leaving a blue space for a single God where the old gods stood before, The first god was a gommier. The generator began with a whine, and a shark, with sidewise jaw, sent the chips flying like mackrel over water into trembling weeds"

"No masterpieces in huge frames to worship, … and yet there are the days when every street corner rounds itself into a sunlit surprise, a painting or a phrase, canoes drawn up by the market, the harbour’s blue, the barracks. So much to do still, all of it praise."

"Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic."

"The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself."

"I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style."

"you can't separate your growth from your soil. (1968)"

"I don't read poetry for pleasure. I read to be terrified in a way. And people who terrify me from their size and the grandeur of their imagination now are people like Pasternak and Neruda, a lot of Latin-American poets, Lowell - very few English poets - Ted Hughes a little...very few English poets now in fact (1968)"

"I have always believed in fierce, devoted apprenticeship... I have always tried to keep my mind Gothic in its devotions to the concept of master and apprentice. The old masters made new masters by the discipline of severity. One's own voice is an anthology of all the sounds one has heard. As it is with children, so with poets. (1983)"

"I do not consider English to be the language of my masters. I consider language to be my birthright. I happen to have been born in an English and a Creole place, and love both languages. It is the passion, futility and industry of critics to perpetuate this ambiguity. It is their profession. It is mine to do what other poets before me did, Dante, Chaucer, Villon, Burns, which is to fuse the noble and the common language, the streets and the law courts, in a tone that is true to my own voice, in which both accents are heard naturally. (1983)"

"I never thought I would see the day when America (which is based on the idea of liberty, from which the world Liberal comes) would become so self-centered and hypocritical. I mean if democracy considers liberal to be a term of abuse, then we should be terrified. A liberal is someone who believes in liberty. And if it is wrong to be liberal, then the other side has to be fascist. (1987)"

"People who are offering revenge, they are just an enemy. But when you offer peace and love, that infuriates people. And you get killed for that. That's why Christ is killed, that's why King is shot, that's why Gandhi is killed. The idea of a man believing in the universal brotherhood is totally unendurable to someone who would prefer to have that man talk about revenge. (1990)"

"The Caribbean creativity is phenomenal. It is an astonishing phenomenon. The kind of writing that has been produced in these islands is such elaborate work. It was inevitable historically and culturally. But it is still as astonishing. Now you're talking about writers of equality, of Jean Rhys, Saint-John Perse, Aimé Césaire, V. S. Naipaul. And these people are different colors and different races. (1990)"

"I love the opulent poetry of Tishani Doshi and the more formal work of Derek Walcott and Christian Wiman."

"...a master wordsmith. These words are his, from his poem "The Schooner Flight": I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, And either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation... Doesn't that last line just fucking give you chills, coming hard on the heels of what preceded it? Goddamn. Much respect."

"I like the magic that operates in many of Derek's plays, the lushness and the exquisite wordcraft of them, and the fact that he uses Creole and music."

"...no matter how you look at Walcott, Walcott is a major figure; he is a Miltonic figure, a Shakespearean figure, a Chaucer figure. He stands in Caribbean literature like those figures: Chaucer, maybe Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton-those major, major massive figures who have already covered generations of work. And others come along who have their own value, their own work, but these guys have always already done more than anybody else. You look into the past, they've already done the past; you look into the future, they've already done things in the future. So he's a significant poet because he is the major poet, in terms of form and style, concerns, themes, and so on. And I very much look to him for form and so on. In terms of the ideology and the content, as I say, I think there is certainly a difference, as I move more and more into Christian poetry. You couldn't really describe Walcott as a Christian poet - not in that strict sense of the term. Our concerns have been independence, how we deal with the politics of the situation and so on...He has done his work and I think those of us coming after have to do our own work. We can't repeat him. We should not. We should learn from him and move on."

"We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us."

"The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most."

"Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life."

"All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term."

"I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde, which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918."

"An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it."

"Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past."

"Is it possible to find, in our human annals, words more majestic, more full of solemn anguish, more august in tone, more devout, more terrible? Where, from the depths of an agnosticism, which thousands of years have augmented, can we point to a wider horizon? At the very outset, it surpasses all that has been said, and goes farther than we shall even dare to go."

"Thanks to the labors of a science which is comparatively recent, and more especially to the researches of the students of Hindu and Egyptian antiquities, it is very much easier today than it was not so long ago to discover the source, to ascend the course and unravel the underground network of that great mysterious river which since the beginning of history has been flowing beneath all the religions, all the faiths, and all the philosophies: in a word, beneath all the visible and everyday manifestations of human thought. It is now hardly to be contested that this source is to be found in ancient India. Thence in all probability the sacred teaching spread into Egypt, found its way to ancient Persia and Chaldea, permeated the Hebrew race, and crept into Greece and the north of Europe, finally reaching China and even America."

"We possess, in the sacred and secret books of India, of which we know only an infinitesimal part, a cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed."

"We cannot tell how the religion of the Hindus came into being. When we become aware of it, we find it already complete in its broad outlines, its main principles. Not only is it complete, but the farther back we go, the more perfect it is, the more unadulterated, the more closely related to the loftiest speculations of our modern agnosticism."

"Quand nous perdons un être aimé, ce qui nous fait pleurer les larmes qui ne soulagent point, c'est le souvenir des moments où nous ne l'avons pas assez aimé."

"The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods."

"It is not my purpose here to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon."

"For in truth all our justice, morality, all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial necessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modification of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral existence. Were the belief one day to become general that man could dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage. For we find that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also; and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded pleasures of life. And it is in the passionate craving for these pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the race."

"This ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for life that today means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?"

"I know that you are looking for the Blue Bird, that is to say, the great secret of things and of happiness, so that Man may make our servitude still harder. … I do not hear the Animals... Where are they?... All this concerns them as much as us... We, the Trees, must not assume the responsibility alone for the grave measures that have become necessary... On the day when Man hears that we have done what we are about to do, there will be terrible reprisals... It is right, therefore, that our agreement should be unanimous, so that our silence may be the same..."

"You know, my brothers, the nature of our business. The child you see before you, thanks to a talisman stolen from the powers of Earth, is able to take possession of the Blue Bird and thus to snatch from us the secret which we have kept since the origin of life... Now we know enough of Man to entertain no doubt as to the fate which he reserves for us once he is in possession of this secret. That is why it seems to me that any hesitation would be both foolish and criminal... It is a serious moment; the child must be done away with before it is too late..."

"Don't be alarmed … They are a little annoyed because Spring is late... Leave it to me; I will settle it all."

"He's not quite blue yet, but that will come, you shall see! … Take him off quick to your little girl..."

"Never mind... Don't cry... I will catch him again... [Stepping to the front of the stage and addressing the audience.] If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?... We need him for our happiness, later on..."

"It is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity is in question. The idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness is something so special, so human, so fragile that it does not exceed our stature and falls to dust as soon as we go beyond its little sphere. It proceeds entirely from a few accidents of our nerves, which are made to appreciate very slight happenings, but which could as easily have felt everything the reverse way and taken pleasure in that which is now pain. We believe that we see nothing hanging over us but catastrophes, deaths, torments and disasters; we shiver at the mere thought of the great interplanetary spaces, with their cold and formidable and gloomy solitudes; and we imagine that the revolving worlds are as unhappy as ourselves because they freeze, or clash together, or are consumed in unutterable flames. We infer from this that the genius of the universe is an outrageous tyrant, seized with a monstrous madness, and that it delights only in the torture of itself and all that it contains. To millions of stars, each many thousand times larger than our sun, to nebulee whose nature and dimensions no figure, no word in our languages is able to express, we attribute our momentary sensibility, the little ephemeral and chance working of our nerves; and we are convinced that life there must be impossible or appalling, because we should feel too hot or too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need but a trifle, a few papilla more or less to our skin, the slightest modification of our eyes and ears, to turn the temperature, the silence and the darkness of space into a delicious spring-time, an unequalled music, a divine light. It were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes which we think that we behold are life itself, the joy and one or other of those immense festivals of mind and matter in which death, thrusting aside at last our two enemies, time and space, will soon permit us to take part. Each world dissolving, extinguished, crumbling, burnt or colliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of a magnificent experiment, the dawn of a marvelous hope and perhaps an unexpected happiness drawn direct from the inexhaustible unknown. What though they freeze or flame, collect or disperse, pursue or flee one another: mind and matter, no longer united by the same pitiful hazard that joined them in us, must rejoice at all that happens; for all is but birth and re-birth, a departure into an unknown filled with wonderful promises and maybe an anticipation of some unutterable event … And, should they stand still one day, become fixed and remain motionless, it will not be that they have encountered calamity, nullity or death; but they will have entered into a thing so fair, so great, so happy and bathed in such certainties that they will for ever prefer it to all the prodigious chances of an infinity which nothing can impoverish."

"In all climes we pitch out tents, Cronies of the elements, With the secret lords of birth Intimate and free."

"The people blossoms armies and puts forth The splendid summer of its noiseless might."

"Nor love they least Who strike with right good will To vanquish ill And fight God’s battle upward from the beast."

"Who would not rather founder in the fight Than not have known the glory of the fray?"

"Praise be to you, O hills, that you can breathe Into our souls the secret of your power!"

"I have need of the sky, I have business with the grass; I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling Lone and high, And the slow clouds go by. I will get me away to the waters that glass The clouds as they pass. I will get me away to the woods."

"Spring in the world! And all things are made new!"

"For ’t is always fair weather When good fellows get together With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear."

"The East and the West in the spring of the world shall blend As a man and a woman that plight Their troth in the warm spring night."

"The great white cold walks abroad!"

"How loving is the Lord God and how strong withal!"

"Shall the iron argue with the smith what it would be? Or, shall the wrought iron reason with the monger To whom it would be sold?"

"Love seeks a guerdon; friendship is as God, Who gives and asks no payment."

"Fair weather weddings make fair weather lives."

"There is no sorrow like a love denied Nor any joy like love that has its will."

"There are worser ills to face Than foemen in the fray; And many a man has fought because— He feared to run away."

"When I am dead, bury me"

"ÉIRE (translation)"

"TYM BARDZIEJ"

"THE MORE (translation)"

"Look up - to where the corn is green!"

"Every morning I wake up with the news of bloodshed. I feel my body, desperate to know whether I’m still alive."

"Thank God, my name isn't in the list of those who died or were killed yesterday!"

"An uneasy rhythm of life is more life like than an easy death."

"I chose none to ask why the wind was blowing there chasing the fogs"

"I asked none why life ends in ways uncertain."

"The dream too thinks twice, gets filtered to go soft to be seated on children's eyes."

"Even if they (Children) try to pluck it, the flower submits itself onto their hands. If it happens to prick their heels, the thorn scorns itself all its life."

"I wonder– didn’t the Creator really do injustice? With a power to defeat everyone without any battle, children are busy at play with the most beautiful moments of their life. Once they grow conscious of it, those moments will have gone away never to return to them."

"Once positioned on their(children's) lips, even the scariest of words come out as a melodious lisp."

"Even If they (children) fall during their play, the nature, having come under the spell of their creative sports, doesn’t know when they again start to play so full of jest. Believing that they fall unknowingly the ground, mostly, does not even hurt them."

"If they (children) smash, the flower vase assumes a smile while turning into pieces. For a chance to be spilled by their hands, anything they hold gets spilled itself full of happiness. For a chance to play with them, water forgets about its own colourlessness."

"Let me not so much be lost in involvements as would make me incapable of recognizing the fragrance of the flower beaming in my own yard."

"May I not so much be lost as would have No time to look at myself Ever."

"May I not so much, so much be lost, just To see the hue, grace, glory gone Off the face of my beloved As I’d wake and be conscious."

"Will you please go journeying for your own sake, till I come living a moment of life?"

"Through years of my prime I walked with a heart crazy about love."

"I wanted my heart to bloom and shelter a shadow of love"

"I wanted to paint a picture, in indelible print, across the canvass of my heart."

"I am tipsy after my own feelings themselves have become wine. I forget myself, world and all."

"If I'd ever grown prosperous like Shah Jahan was, I'd not have waited for my beloved's death before I erected a Taj Mahal."

"I want the fever to grab me forever and want you to be my fever"

"Tonight, may I get so drunk in love that I do not see any dreams!"

"Commands- you're sure to hear from above if you're placed down below."

"I like desires like children and their plays that tease me now and then into knowing life."

"I salute my desires with a bow., were it not for them to come and play mind would be empty just like me."

"I believed all along, one day everyone would go mad just to see me sane."

"Even after all that, each and every being here believe, that the heat will be defeated and coolness will prevail. The experience knows that the rule of an autocrat cannot last long."

"Haunted trees covered behind the curtains of their own leaves stare at the dark from the fringe of streets."

"Lampposts look in the glow of their defeated light robbed by the fog but cannot tell if the streets lying by stretching limbs in courtyards are sleeping face downwards or supine."

"Creation does not cease just because there is darkness!"

"I would regard meanings given by others so far as refreshing boon, I would still be enamored of rose or any heartless flower's smell if tender tides of your affection had not suffused the pollen of my heart with loving aroma."

"I shall not go out at all given that my love is here shall always stay attached to these hearts. I shall never bid farewell to this place! But I have to send this body anyhow from here."

"What heart touched is what is touched what heart experienced is what is experienced where heart lived is what is lived."

"I could not say which one was more authentic, their fate or the slender woody sticks that supported their shacks."

"I felt I was getting enraged and losing my speech like them losing their dreams."

"I was feeling like mad by the melody of birds singing out of tune in the settlements where travels lose their own destinations."

"Is freedom dearer than life? or does it become easier to live when life becomes difficult?"

"Life was running, running after a mirage-like desires."

"I asked my life why it carried along my dreams but chose to escape me."

"Still enveloped in a blanket of dreams my life continued to lie still, pretending as if it was in a deep slumber."

"The road kept coming, and continued going somewhere alone."

"This evening, too the Sun had to tell the same story before he went away, leaving the forlorn moon hankering after his light."

"Let us be honest we have praised Angulimala will make no difference if you convey my salute to Amrapali."

"This moment I am keener on the stories of valour washed away by this year's monsoon floods than the abstract shapes glued to myths, history and stories."

"When this flood blocks the road I am worried more by my soil getting washed, than by getting late to reach my destination."

"Should I complete this poem or should I put my room’s light out?"

"In how many minds should I go crazy? whom should I ask?"

"Which eyes should I look for to find the ultimate unreasoned answer?"

"Without asking anybody’s advice I turned myself insane."

"You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!"

"I know you'll speak no truth at this time. I've to be guided solely by your silence, your eyes and the inaudible appeals of your heart."

"The walls are releasing heat , as if they are angry with each other. The room has been insaned by the heat. The bed is inflamed as if it were an oven. The bed sheet is soaked with sweat, and about to run away getting stuck to the man."

"The experience knows that the rule of an autocrat cannot last long."

"From the sky one cannot touch the heart of the stone petrified with a desire to live after living a life of softness for long, one cannot get to touch the tenderness of a flower smiling despite being battered in turn by heat and frost."

"The lovers feel that they are content looking at each other from a distance. The repulsiveness caused by heat between them, is more powerful than all cravings for love and lust."

"Having been ripped open and drained by the crowd when I enter my home, many homes seem to be waiting for me to give a shape to this life which is about to perish."

"I'm searching a heart inside me-- a heart that's ebullient by swallowing the entire pain of the creation, a heart jubilant by accepting the entire tears of the world, a heart aglow by merging the entire dark within itself a heart that's smooth, effervescent and clean."

"This market speaking life when heard from each person is now making staggering confused noise of all people speaking together."

"Man and woman cease to be humans once they get lost into crowds."

"Are people like market who live as humans when they’re alone but live as great complexity when they’re in groups?"

"Pristine river of lives is swallowed by the crowd- Human getting lost into humans."

"All trees and birds sky and stars bosoms and bangles were seeing everything."

"I had also read on the face of surroundings some broken some disconnected some cracked expectations."

"I’ve touched some sentences and have kissed some words."

"Eyes that obstruct the road can be removed but what happens when hearts block the passage?"

"Do not think I’ve reached where I am now by slipping like a landslide or evaporating like a cloud."

"I’ve climbed up here holding the hilt of time’s sword after driving it into my tender heart."

"Whether anybody comes to convince me or not a part of my life does always ache arresting my chest."

"May I splinter away from myself break into whole units and live in each with perfection!"

"This ME made whole by combining countless fragments could not live in any one part with complete ease."

"May I discard the outer cover of time from the layers of poetry by immersing the poet in its entirety within me"

"May life remain enamored of its own charm"

"May the river of love always flow from its own lap."

"May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs"

"(May) the dead body of agony remain asleep resting its head on a pillow of flowers."

"May I free myself from the labyrinth of knowledge"

"May I pack all inventions in burlaps and hide them in corners of Einsteins’ brains."

"May I free myself from the ever-pressing chest and enter the garden of imagination by leisurely hiding brain on hill summits."

"May I take off clothes covering shame at the border leaving them hanging on dry trees of arrogance and run by wearing the rays of the sun."

"May I create plain fields by collecting clouds and bedeck them with arching rainbows."

"Playing ball of wind reaching the other end of The Road Not Taken may I call in Robert Frost by holding hands and request Ginsberg to recite Howl facing the world."

"May I exchange T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland with the future of this earth like a lunatic’s dreams and make one season of poetry farming by tilling with the pen of desire."

"Fell in love with these hearts and this soil these houses, these walls and streets."

"Every moment age is creeping up stealthily, but life, life is melting down like a candle that is flickering around."

"Life is withering away like a candle that is melting down."

"Life incinerates incessantly trying to smile and keeps broiling continuously pretending to be alive."

"Death is shaping up slowly and quietly but life, life is melting down like a candle that is flickering all night."

"Neither my acts have wiped the woes of any sufferer out, nor have I cured pains of wounded ones; with the faith pompous mercenary, O' Glorious! O 'Lord Almighty! how can I bow my head in your adulation?"

"Neither my deeds contain any essence nor, my gestures have sense of zeal, my days are creeping forth for nothingness; with this body deficient of heart and soul O' Glorious! O' Lord Almighty ! how can I come close to you?"

"Tonight, let us exchange every part of our bodies and every space of our souls with each other."

"The eyes hold tears for so long, let us fill it with love and passion."

"Let us convert this night we are breathing together, to a bright morning."

"Unaware about my surrounding, unconscious I live."

"It’s not my wish to walk intoxicated; to live for never is not my choice."

"A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away."

"Wishing to grab the life with nothingness wanting to erase the sigh of tiredness forgetting myself completely from my being why do I seek embrace of yours do not ask me, I know not, I am in oblivion."

"Let my pains remain with me."

"Let my pains remain with me, I won't utter, I express it not."

"My heart itself is a wound, no medicine can cure it. It deepens further if stared at, and hurts more if touched."

"This ambiance of candlelight reminds of nights that traveled its way, in entangled embrace of yours and mine."

"I like you everywhere on you."

"May I get melted in closeness and get blazed in embrace."

"I wish me to cry for no reason in excess of love."

"I wish me to vanish somewhere around here."

"The feeling I groped assuming love was nothing but a fire."

"Keep some fires burning in your heart; I would extinguish it if I could, or get myself engulfed with it."

"I shall give you a song, and you fill melody in it."

"I want to be everywhere of you."

"How could it be wished that poetry of a mellow age be born when this time is taking showers in the drama of loathsome taste!”"

"It's not as easy as it is with chewing shame and foolishness to chew the wreckage of broken time."

"I'm bereft of poetry on this planet, from where the beauties of Creation are vanishing away furiously.”"

"What was wafting in the smoke of burning tires? Where had time caught in the traffic jam not reaching?”"

"I had read on the face of surroundings; some broken, some disconnected, some cracked expectations."

"I want to love the self that you say is you."

"May my pains remain with me, I won't utter, I express it not."

"I gather all of my sorrow, and bring you in my reminiscence, I think of you and forget all of my pain."

"When I closed my eyes withdrawing myself from darkness I saw light glowing everywhere."

"I spry my closed vision over the streets of this city and the shadows lurching within it."

"The road meanders, wandering in tandem with itself."

"Ascending and descending, uphill and downhill, the road inclines and slopes, sliding down yet climbing anew."

"The road never halts."

"Splitting love among differences between love and soul, love and the heart, love and the body love and life and slicing it further into multiple pieces how may I offer you my entire love?"

"I have offered many of my self to you to get a single you."

"I lived my youth in dreams of others."

"Someone asked me, 'Is there water in your pot?' I pointed to the leaves of a coconut tree."

"Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”"

"In influencing write-ups, words seem to move despite residing still on paper."

"In many a situation, the images that words hide while walking forth are the desired meaning of particular words rather than the word itself. Those words sing and dance by coming out of the paper."

"Language is texture of images and music. We speak in images and rhythm, by taking help of words."

"In literary translations, it is this very articulation of expressions that matters the most to bring home to the readers the full essence of the original text in question."

"Chance of source language influencing the target language and that of the translator intervening onto the style of original writer are major challenges in literary translation."

"On translating text into the new language as it is in source language, there is a chance of it being emerged as an absurd sentence in the target language making no sense at all. In the attempt to make the translation meaningful to the target language, there exists a risk of the original work getting meddled by the translator’s style.”"

"Literary translation is not merely an act of picking words from one language and keeping it by dipping in the vessel of another language. Those words need to be rinsed, washed, carved and decorated as much as possible."

"Poetry emerging from a poet enters into the reader only when it comes within the readers’ 'sphere of intellect."

"A reader cannot take poetry by expanding it beyond his/her consciousness, rather can take by shrinking it within."

"There exists a chance of every poem getting changed while reaching every reader. This ‘getting changed’ is a form of ‘getting translated’, in a way. So, every assimilation of any poem is a translation."

"Before getting translated, a poem already gets shrunk or expanded within the ‘sphere of intellect’ of the translator in the original language, and it again gets shrunk or expanded within the ‘sphere of intellect’ of the translator in the target language."

"In translation of poetry; there exists a possibility of components like imagination, art of wordplay, skill of constructing internal rhythm and expand of knowledge of the poet getting affected by the constraint and differentia of the translator."

"Poetry is a potent tool capable of guiding societies worldwide through its invisible aesthetic strength."

"Imagery plays a vital role in conveying a message, bringing it to life, and engaging readers' senses and emotions."

"Anything that touches my heart holds the potential to inspire me."

"Nature is the grandest warehouse discovered on this planet, hence anything that touches my heart holds the potential to inspire me, as it enables me to delve into my emotions and forge connections with others through shared experiences."

"The importance of forging meaningful relationships and exploring the intricacies of human connections has served as a catalyst for my creative expression."

"Through my writing, I aim to highlight the significance of fostering healthy and fulfilling relationships and inspire others to cherish the bonds they share with fellow human beings."

"Imagery immerses readers in the ambiance created by the pebbles of words, making it compelling and memorable."

"My ultimate aspiration in life is to contribute to a world where peace prevails, as peace is the ultimate achievement to realize in life."

"Writing is also like love, if one can't have the courage to be a renunciant, they cannot write well."

"At this juncture, the 'world' is no longer confined to just one or two places; it has spread worldwide."

"Nature is the grandest warehouse discovered on this planet."

"I firmly believe that everyone should be free to pursue their desires as long as it does not harm others or society."

"As human beings, we have an innate need to create and innovate from within ourselves to address our own concerns."

"I believe that the human being is the most complicated chapter of existence, with thousands of dimensions."

"As a writer, I believe that showing or letting readers feel is often more convincing than telling, and imagery allows me to accomplish just that."

"Peace is the ultimate achievement to realize in life."

"Poets are the most difficult creatures to work with."

"Human being is the most complicated chapter of existence."

"As humans, we seek ways to fill gaps in our lives through love, food, pleasure, challenges, and more."

"Nepal is my home, a land of many wonders, but the greatest of them all is its unparalleled diversity and rich heritage.”"

"I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity."

"Love is a feeling and its expression is an art."

"I found the Taj Mahal as the most appropriate example of artistically expressed love."

"As my childhood got opportunity to grow up amidst variety of geography and people practicing different cultures, I could experience the very essence of our diversity."

"Poetry is part of our culture in many ways."

"I am quite sure that poetry will live long with our generations to come."

"Love, compassion, humanity are values which are irreplaceable."

"The Taj Mahal is not just a monument, but a symbol of love."

"We cannot imagine a mind without body."

"A good poem cannot be written with one's mind on the earth. Though one has to write poems about the earth and existence, one cannot write poems while staying grounded. To write an outstanding poem, a flight to the heights of transcendence is needed. However, a person cannot always remain in that elevated state. When one descends, they touch the earth and write ordinary stuff."

"Trust isn't solely about keeping faith in others' promises; it's also about being dependable in the promises we've made to others."

"Merely holding the desire to walk together with someone is not enough if one does not possess the art and aptitude of walking together."

"A heart can hold a heart-full of anything."

"Silence is the best language to speak in when you have lots of things to say."

"I am stark sane, but my mind is erratically crazy."

"I am playful in words but sincere in action."

"No matter how happy you are; start assuming, suspecting and doubting; and make yourself the most unhappy person on the universe."

"Keep yourself busy until you feel sleepy."

"Silence is polite, but not always."

"Love is the cruelest event."

"Sometimes, silence works more intensely than a bayonet to slay a tender heart."

"Some people are so stiff-necked that they cannot think any other way than their own preconceived ideas."

"If you are working in a team, do not expect an outcome of your excellence."

"Together; we would create some ecstatic memories, but you are either busy or sleepy."

"I exist no more, every moment a new being lives inside me."

"They called it that, I mean ‘democracy’."

"Gnawing upon our resentment, we stretch out in an iron cage, Watching the slow passage of days and months. How we despise the insolent crowd outside, Standing there foolishy, with tiny eyes bulging, As they mock the stately spirit of the deep jungle. Here by misfortune, shamefully caged, We are no more than a novel sight to amuse them, some plaything... O stately soul, heroic land, Vast domain where yesteryear we freely roamed, We see you no more. But do you know that during our days of frustration We follow a great dream, letting our souls race to be near you, O formidable jungle of ours!"

"The muse lends me a lyre of myriad tunes, her brush of myriad tints—I want to play a wizard working wonders, magic tricks with all the sounds and colors of the earth."

"When a lady chooses to change her mind, a gentleman would consider it no more than her privilege, and not badger her about it. (The Land of Green Ginger, 1937)"

"The greatest redemption is between the war of two evils, their very retaliation reveals their goodly nature."

"A young ticket should never be envied, they queue for the bus the same as us."

"It's in weather such as this, I'm glad that I'm human."

"There are three things in a Woman's life that should never be empty, her heart, bed and glass."

"Down like a Welsh town."

"Old things do not interest me, I like new things for the simple reason that they never get old."

"Even in your last fragile moments, I will forever be your gentle svelte with rosy cheeks as you are, were and always shall be my little ones."

"Ghosts?...Yes nasty little buggers.."

"This champagne's made by the French and no mistake, you can tell by the shape of the bubbles.."

"I don't have many friends, so I try and be there for the ones that do make it that far."

"Change the subject...actually give me a cigarette and then change the subject."

"If a young man gets married, starts a family, and spends the rest of his life working at a soul-destroying job, he is held up as an example of virtue and responsibility. The other type of man, living only for himself, working only for himself, doing first one thing and then another simply because he enjoys it and because he has to keep only himself, sleeping where and when he wants, and facing woman when he meets her, on equal terms and not as one of a million slaves, is rejected by society. The free, unshackled man has no place in its midst."

"Woman's greatest ideal is a life without work or responsibility - yet who leads such a life but a child? A child with appealing eyes, a funny little body with dimples and sweet layers of baby fat and clear, taut skin - that darling miniature of an adult. It is a child that woman imitates - its easy laugh, its helplessness, its need for protection. A child must be cared for; it cannot look after itself And what species does not, by natural instinct, look after its offspring? It must - or the species will die out. With the aid of skillfully applied cosmetics, designed to preserve that precious baby look; with the aid of helpless, appealing babble and exclamations such as 'Ooh' and 'Ah' to denote astonishment, surprise, and admiration; with inane little bursts of conversation, women have preserved this 'baby look' for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her."

"When a scientific principle puts on the toga of social dignity, it turns itself into a bell or a parrot; such phantoms have always been the most dangerous enemies of reason."

"Between the Protestant North and the Counter-Reformation of Vienna, menaced by Venetian intrigue, under the Ottomans and under the bloody tyranny of their own native nobles, split into three churches and five states, the Croatian masses vegetated in passive resistance for centuries, invisibly resilient in their Proto-Slavic passivity, which had survived the lordships of Rome and Byzantium and already (in principle) was getting over Istanbul. (...)Born in the Schism between Rome and the Slavs, torn by the fatal dilemma of the East and West, Križanić is a typical victim of our geographic position. As the instigator of Russian imperialism on a conceptual level equalling Peter the Great, as a forerunner and prophet of Panslavism, of Slavophiles, as the linguist of a Cyrillic/Latin synthesis to be followed by Romantic Illyrians, Soloviev, Rački, Strossmayer, and all the way to our "realistic" contemporary Yugoslavian political movement (1898-1928), as a theoretical colonizer of the remote Slavic East, historian of Siberia and dreamer of China, as a desperate man with Biblical lamentations over the schism, this half-mad missionary was abused for years, later suffered as an interned monk and beggar, and eventually died under Turkish hooves. (...)Around Juraj Križanić, armies were marching under generals Isolani and Wallenstein, cannons were firing around Prague, Magdeburg and Lutzen. People were skinned alive, impaled on stakes, had their throats cut, drank human blood, massacred one another from Sisak to Koprivnica for a hundred years, and everywhere there was the wail of the wounded, the rattling of lepers, and the mumbling of cripples and beggars. Everything was bloody like a wound and stank like a beggar's putrid rag."

"Clerks and constables, barracks and precincts, municipalities, documents, offices: all of this was seen by our heroes [mobilized Croatian peasants] as a machine that was invented by educated city folk for the sole purpose of letting the blood of paupers and counting the peasants' bags, pigs, and mares; however, this entire machinery of educated folk and doctors of the Triune Kingdom underestimated the great and indomitable life inside them, and when our heroes thought about themselves and their life, this is what it looked like, more or less: this is my hut; it has a slanted roof so that rain flows left and right instead of falling on my head. It's a good invention, not having the rain fall on one's head, and I inherited it from my grandfather, this sooty warm roof, and I will leave it to my son, because a roof is a smart thing. (Without a roof, man would be like a beast.) I sit under this mushroom of mine and watch the smoke go up, while the waters of heaven flow and soak the fields. This is good too. My wife sits at the loom like a spider, there is a potato rolling in my pot, and there should be a couple of fat smoked ribs on the attic. That is all. Honestly, I don't need more. Life is good! The man lights his pipe in the twilight as he watches yellow cat eyes shining like fireflies in the oxen steam in the stable. Life is good! (...)These people were shot by Hungarian gendarmes, all according to the Compromise of 1868, they had their wives and daughters raped by revolutionaries in 1848 and by deserters after Custozza and Solferino; when their women gave birth, they still cut the umbilical cord themselves, with a sickle, and went to work three days later; the dead were splashed with wine just like in the old pagan times. The fact that huge empires rose and fell on the shores of the European seas, that new lands were discovered, that life fundamentally changed, all of that didn't mean a thing to this life here. Or rather it did! Churches and prisons were built in the valleys: stone buildings with flags and Roman crosses, with lightning rods and church organs, with bars and articles of law; but all those prisons and offices and churches were not there yesterday, and it may come to pass that those churches and documents and articles will not be there tomorrow either, and the villages of Saint Elizabeth and Saint John will be Foxhole and Wolf Pit like before, and we're quits! God be praised!Since they considered things and measured events with this sublime and tried measure, it is quite natural that our heroes weren't too upset about this so-called war."

"[Zagreb. The twilight of Austria-Hungary. At the celebration of a priest's First Mass, the youth discusses the problems of the state and the church. The older generation, on the other hand...]"Ask these respectable gentlemen, if you don't believe me, to explain to you that the Earth is round!", angrily said uncle Šimonić, the janitor of the observatory. He has some little authority in astronomy, after all. When great professors and astronomers go to the attic to look at the stars, they go through his kitchen! And he carries all the keys to the stars in his pocket. And this man before him, this member of the public who doesn't even know what is an eclipse, this dolt won't believe him that the Earth is round and spinning like a ball."Round! So it is round! Fine, have it your way! It is round! Well then! Is this apple round? It is? So it is round like the Earth, as you say. And this crumb here is a man! Tell me now, how come the crumb falls from the apple when I turn the apple around? Well? Look how it falls right away! Did you ever hear that a single man fell off the Earth? You haven't? Would you be so kind and explain this to me?"That's true! Uncle Šimonić never thought that a man would fall off the Earth if it was really round. And it's as simple as a slap in the face, god damn it. And when those crazy professors up in the observatory explain things to him, it all seems so clear to him. But there you have it! Crumbs fall off the apple, and Šimonić, the royal janitor of the royal observatory, could fall off the Earth by the same principle. There's something fishy here after all!"

"A Person Unknown has brought Autumn in the North Room. Oh now, when all is color, harvest, and smell of wine, when one hears the song of Things and Beasts, when the longing dead yell in their graves, A Person Unknown has brought Autumn on a silver platter in the room: grapes and pears, apples and figs.And outside there are steaming pools of sun juice, as one hears through the window: in the silk of day a woman is singing.And the birds tweet on."

"Ever more alone, ever madder, remoter, sadder alone, ever darker, ever baser, as it awfuls more and more.Ever colder, ever viler, ever icier, autumn's lonely void, as it autumns more and more."

"She expressed herself clearly, as only people who talk a lot to themselves can."

"Human beings worked constantly to make their gods unnecessary. He was an individual who made scientific measurements: one day time and perhaps also space would be measured and controlled by scales of measurements hitherto unknown. The supernatural was shadows dancing in the remains of a childhood fear of the dead."

"Averno was my homage to Mankell. I tried to use something from one of his books in every one of the poems. Nobody noticed it, which is good, but it was there for me."

"We can now line up along with our countrymen and women of honour and share the rights to be remunerated even while we are "resting", we can now ask for Arts Endowment fund, to encourage the development of talents and the industry, especially now our government is interested in our skills. As plants grow on from the soul, so films grow from stage."

"Finally, she looks up and asks: “Do you have any pets?” She doesn’t know why this question. He shakes his head. He doesn’t like the idea of animals being domesticated. He says something about corrupting the animal spirit. She says: “And cockroaches?”"

"How many years have we got to live in this country before they stop calling us immigrants?"

"We were filming Black Christmas [...] and I went to see a friend and it struck me that the atmosphere in Birmingham was very different from London. It was more relaxed and black people seemed to have more time for other black people and it was easier to see what their problems were. The rent, work and all that kind of thing. And you could hear all the black kids and the Asian kids talking in this brummie accwnt. That was strange, I thought I had to write about it. I talked it over with the producer and the series started there. It's supposed to be funny but something peculiar happened ... [A]s I wrote it, the situation got darker and darker. In Empire Road I start off with one character who's supposed to be comical and by the fourth episode I've got him turning round and saying—I've been laughed at all my life—by the next episode the situation is enough to make you weep. I can't write about black people just as funny characters, because that seems like an insult to lives we lead in Britain."

"White people are not aware of the many differences within the black community [...] There differences of class, of generation. You can tell immediately when you go into a Guyanan home like that of the petit-bourgeois character that Norman Beaton plays, compared with the garish colours of the Jamaican ones—which I found are toned down in the Jamaicans of London."

"[T]he best Black playwright to emerge from his generation."

"[On Empire Road] The television series was unique not only because it was the first soap operas to be conceived and written by a black writer for a black cast but also because it was specifically about the British–Caribbean experience."

"Much of Abbensetts drama has focused on issues of race and power, but he has always been reluctant to be seen as restricted to issue–based drama. His dialogue is concerned with the development and growth of character, and he is fundamentally aware of the methods and contexts for his actors."

"In America there’s a custom: you moofe. That is, you pack up from one apartment to the next. From one street to the next. From one biznes to the next. Everybody has to moofe. If you don’t moofe of your own free will, then they make it so you have to."

"Once a joke, twice a joke, but not a joke forever."

"The sun gave light, but no warmth. Like a stepmother, as they say in Kasrilevke."

"In one of your letters, you [Grandfather] said to me: “I would advise you not to write any novels, as your taste, your style is something else entirely, and above all, if there are novels to be found in the lives of our people, they are entirely different from those of other nations. One needs a firm grasp of this and must write accordingly.” Your words bore deep into my brain and I began to understand how different a Jewish love story needs to be from all other novels, because Jewish life in general, and the circumstances under which a Jew can love, are in no way similar to how they are for other nations."

"That is precisely the problem with the youth of today: we never have any time, and we rush the entire work in one single breath, standing, as the saying goes, on one foot, without stopping to ponder each thought, each separate word, without working on it and filing it down, as you do."

"We Jews are fond of listening to music and have a good grasp of melody—even our enemies would be the first to admit that—and yet on the other hand, we don’t often get the opportunity to hear it. What do we have to celebrate after all, for us to suddenly break into song and dance? Say what you will, though, we are still connoisseurs, experts in both singing and playing music, and in all manner of other things to boot."

"The fiddle weeps, sinking to the lower strings"

"No doubt everyone has worries—a Jew does not need to go looking for trouble."

"The heart itself, and particularly the Jewish heart, is a violin: you pluck the strings, teasing out various, generally sad and gloomy songs"

"He would grab his fiddle and with one pass of his bow, just one mind you, the fiddle would begin to speak. What do I mean by “speak”? I mean literally, with words, with a tongue like, excuse the comparison, a living human being. Talking, arguing, singing mournfully in the Jewish fashion with such a wild cry from deep inside, from the very soul."

"In the short run, the identity of victim does, indeed, pay off. Sholem Aleichem recognized this in his story "Lucky Me, I Am an Orphan." Anyone who is a victim and nothing but a victim-in the sense of "deserving" compensation and forgiveness for everything-usually milks this position for all it is worth, through the end of the generation that witnessed the tragedy. In the longer run, the perpetuation of the victim identity causes complete severance from reality, utter dependence on the past and the past alone, and distortions of all proportions and emphases to the point of warping the personality."

"Sholom Aleichem can be forgiven for writing stories that often resemble fairy tales, since his own life was one itself."

"What is rarely known except by scholars is the range and variety of the pre-Holocaust Ashkenazi communities of Europe: traditional, socialist, communist; Orthodox and secular; capitalist and worker; Yiddish-speaking and/or fluent in the vernacular of wherever they lived: Russian, Polish, French, Czech, German. ... There is a whole literature, not just Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, or Sholem Aleykhem whose Tevye stories hit Broadway as Fiddler on the Roof, but also brilliant narrative writers and experimental poets such as Chaim Grade, Kadia Molodowsky, Anna Margolin, Mani Leyb, Itsik Manger, and a host of others."

"From Sholem Aleichem to Peretz and beyond, canonical Yiddish literature does not mince words when it comes to identifying the tormentors of Jews as Christians."

"Modern Yiddish literature attained its maturity with the work of three classical masters: Mendele Moykher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz. These three authors were the literary forebears whom subsequent generations of Yiddish writers both emulated and rebelled against... the depiction of Jewish women is, with some exceptions, not among our literature's finest accomplishments. Throughout all of Yiddish literature, beginning with the classical writers, for instance Mendele and his portrayal of Beyle in Fishke the Cripple, or Sholem Aleichem's depiction of Tevye's daughters in Tevye the Milkman, or Rokhele in Stempenyu, or Bashevis's "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" and Grade's The Agunah, there is an undercurrent of sympathy for the Jewish woman, as well as guilt about her double enslavement, both as woman and as Jew... Thus, some male Yiddish prose writers did faithfully and realistically describe the situation of women in the late-nineteenth century. They depicted their female characters with great tenderness and understanding. But as a general rule, they avoided looking deeper into the more complicated qualities that make up a woman's individuality. The male writer sympathized with the woman's plight; he idealized her, sang her praises, wondered at her, but he knew nothing about who she really was. He did not illuminate her from within."

"The only famous Yiddish stories from Latin America I'm able to make people invoke are the handful of ones by the masters Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. They are set in, or at least refer to, Argentina (and on occasion in an eternally rainy Brazil) and invariably deal with the Jewish prostitution ring-la trata de blancas."

"his masterpiece, "Tevye the Dairyman""

"The King had honoured his play [Journey's End] that night by being present at the Prince of Wales Theatre. In handing over the manuscript of the play he hoped that it might benefit the great cause to which he gave it."

"He did not write the play with the commercial management in mind. He did not write it with a view to peace propaganda; nor did he write for any glorification of war. He wrote it to satisfy himself alone. He wanted to place on record a simple story of war before the memory died. He did not write it with the possibility of an audience in mind, and when one wrote in that way it was easy to tell the truth as one saw it with one's own eyes. One well-known gentleman said it was false; another described it as crude to the last detail; while another writer in a Scandinavian paper said it was the best play Sheridan had written since the War. (Laughter.) He felt that some of his critics had looked from an angle instead of straight from the front. He sincerely resented any statement that it was a disparagement to the soldier to say that the War broke men's nerve. It was the fighting man he had striven to reverence and remember."

"You will never sense the theatre. This is not "acting" but reality. The hand of God presses itself firmly on your shoulder. You realise how truly noble, in spite of all its shortcomings, is this lump of clay called "man." Your soul will be full of gratitude that such men existed, and that they were Englishmen—that the inherited nobility of the race survived at such a moment. These men bring the war back to us."

"In the early part of the century, audiences possibly listened more than they do today. In Journey's End the verbal construction of the play is very specific, as it is in this play What Every Woman Knows]. I found that if one hadn't committed oneself at the very beginning to the style as laid down by Sherriff, one would reach an emotional hiatus. The style is similar to Barrie's in its literateness. Playing Stanhope was one of the most uplifting things in my career. The Boys' Own part of me could identify with him, and his first entrance was almost the peak of the part. For 15 minutes they've all been talking about Stanhope so in that first moment one had to present that caring about the front line the clinical awareness of the dangers of laziness, of guns being rusty and things like that. It was emotionally and intellectually exhausting to build to that pitch of mania each night, but it did give one's spine a tingle to be able to indulge all the better parts of oneself, to think that one's being a hero."

"Journey's End came at psychologically the right moment. The war had been over for 10 years. What plays there had been about it had tended to be heroic and romanticised – the reality was too near and horrific for close contemplation. Journey's End, set in a dug-out in the front line just before a German offensive, was a simple statement of how men lived after four long years of war... They wait in their dug-out, enduring lice, the stench of earth, ordure, corpses and cordite, knowing but never admitting that their chances of survival are minimal. They talk of insensitive generals but never of the political stupidity that led them to be there. They regard the Germans in their dug-outs on the other side of the barbed wire of No-Man's-Land as being as unfortunate as themselves. They yearn for the sight of the New Forest and the Sussex Downs. To that 1929 audience they must have seemed the incarnation of the lost generation."

"In his play Mr. Sherriff had given the world a great thought, a great message, and, she believed, the profound hope that some day by the exposition of the facts there would be abolished the evil institution of war. (Cheers.) ... Mr. Sherriff had taught them what moral and spiritual degradation could come from international warfare. She would like him in his next play to reveal all the horror of that industrial warfare which condemned in times of peace more than a million men in this country to tramp the streets vainly looking for work."

"Some plays drift into neglect from sheer familiarity. The success of R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End in 1929 still casts its long shadow: everyone has heard of the piece, and probably caught up with it on radio. And it is invariably used as a reference point for subsequent British war plays."

"It makes you think of the old days. We all knew these fellows, didn't we? This is so real."

"If they ask you to come and carry any filth, because of your love for money you will help them to carry it. And it will spoil the name you have been building from your youth."