“Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.”

— Robert Frost

Preface to A Way Out : A One-act Play (1929)
General sources
Context: Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A least lyric alone may have a hard time, but it can make a beginning, and lyric will be piled on lyric till all are easily heard as sung or spoken by a person in a scene — in character, in a setting. By whom, where and when is the question.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing." by Robert Frost?

Robert Frost265

American poet 1874–1963

Related quotes

“Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.”

Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870) French poet

Source: Maldoror and the Complete Works

“How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (October 1997), American Masters (PBS: Thirteen/WNET).
Other

“Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#160
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences — nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1977)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“drama is a good book”

Raina Telgemeier book Drama

Source: Drama

“Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Alchemy in the Theatre (1994).
Context: Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself. Writing about AIDS rather than the cocktail set, or possibly the fairy kingdom, will not guarantee importance.... The old comment that all periods of time are at an equal distance from eternity says much, and pondering on it will lead to alchemical theatre while relevance becomes old hat.

“Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Reported in Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (1962) (who cites Adolph Hausrath 1895 as a source)
Context: The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned, questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than solve such problems. Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith. It falls upon things which are beyond it... desecrates sacred things more than clarifies them. It does not unlock mysteries and symbols, but tears them asunder; it makes nought of everything to which it cannot gain access and disdains to believe all such things.