Edward Bond famous quotes

I think there is no world without theatre.
-- Edward Bond

#Thinking #Theatre #Literature

If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond
-- Edward Bond

#People #Important #Levels

I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.
-- Edward Bond

#Writing #Negativity #Shapes

In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice
-- Edward Bond

#Thinking #Justice #Theatre

I'm not interested in an imaginary world
-- Edward Bond

#World #Not Interested #Imaginary

The one overall structure in my plays is language
-- Edward Bond

#Play #Language #Structure

The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks
-- Edward Bond

#Greek #Theatre

Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human
-- Edward Bond

#Animal #Conscious #Unconscious

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play
-- Edward Bond

#Writing #Play #Down And

It's insulting to ask a dramatist what his view of his play is. I have no opinion
-- Edward Bond

#Views #Play #Insulting

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas
-- Edward Bond

#Mean #Ideas #Democracy

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.
-- Edward Bond

#Punishment #Empires #Bores

We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins.
-- Edward Bond

#Insecurity #Desert #May

What Shakespeare and the Greeks were able to do was radically question what it meant to be a human being.
-- Edward Bond

#Greek #Literature #Able

What I try to do in a play is put a problem on stage, head-on, without evasion.
-- Edward Bond

#Play #Trying #Literature

At the turn of the century theatre does not have to be prescriptive.
-- Edward Bond

#Theatre #Doe #Literature

As Shakespeare himself knew, the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not last an hour on the street.
-- Edward Bond

#Lasts #Hours #Stage

Art is the expression of the conviction that we can have a rational relationship with the world and each other. It isn't the faith or hope that we can, it is the demonstration that we can.
-- Edward Bond

#Art #Expression #World

Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.
-- Edward Bond

#Men #Mad #Awkward

We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.
-- Edward Bond

#People #Scar #Hiroshima

When humanness is lost the radical difference between the bodies in the pit and people walking on the street is lost.
-- Edward Bond

#Differences #People #Pits

It seems to me that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves
-- Edward Bond

#Ignorant

Shakespeare has no answers for us at all
-- Edward Bond

#Answers

Law and order is one of the steps taken to maintain injustice.
-- Edward Bond

#Taken #Order #Law

All you now do is pursue your private objectives within society. Instead of us being a community, everybody is asked to seek their own personal ends. It's called competition. And competition is antagonism.
-- Edward Bond

#Community #Competition #Ends

Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society.
-- Edward Bond

#Art #Reality #Our Society

Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done.
-- Edward Bond

#Drama #Greek #Done

In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.
-- Edward Bond

#Past #Goodness #Collectives

Violence is never a solution in my plays, just as ultimately violence is never a solution in human affairs.
-- Edward Bond

#Play #Violence #Affair

Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.
-- Edward Bond

#Democracy #Violence #Structure

You have to learn the language of Hamlet.
-- Edward Bond

#Language

But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.
-- Edward Bond

#World #Be Good

Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.
-- Edward Bond

#Tragedy #Auschwitz

Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.
-- Edward Bond

#Years #Play #Fifteen

The truth has got to appear plausible on the stage
-- Edward Bond

#Stage

Now, drama is quite useful at helping us to understand what our position is and, conversely, we might then understand why our theatre is being destroyed
-- Edward Bond

#Drama #Theatre #Might

The human mind is a dramatic structure in itself and our society is absolutely saturated with drama
-- Edward Bond

#Drama #Mind #Our Society

I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.
-- Edward Bond

#Writing #Play #Mad

I'm interested in the real world.
-- Edward Bond

#Real #World #Real World

I don't think it's the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it.
-- Edward Bond

#Jobs #Thinking #Political

First there was the theatre of people and animals, then of people and the devil. Now we need the theatre of people and people.
-- Edward Bond

#Animal #People #Theatre

Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.
-- Edward Bond

#Humanity #Chairs #Auschwitz

The Greeks said very, very extreme things in their tragedies.
-- Edward Bond

#Greek #Tragedy #Said