“The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies.”

— Kevin Spacey

As quoted in The Old Vic, Summer 2011

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 "The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When …" by Kevin Spacey?

Kevin Spacey 8

American actor, director and producer 1959

Related quotes

“India is still foreign to me, it's a familiar foreignness in some way, but it's still surprising. When you see a temple in India, you don't say, oh there's another temple, you say: "My God! How could anyone have had the imagination to do something so amazing!"”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

It's never what you expect.
About her comfort level staying in India.
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

“I was already at the twentieth section of the book and not very happy with it, when I realised how it could be written. I saw that I would only be able to write it if I did so as if I were actually telling the story. That could not be done by putting so-called oral language into writing, because that's impossible, but by introducing into my writing a mechanism of apparent spontaneity, apparent digression and apparent disorganisation in the discourse. I say 'apparent' since I am only too aware of how much work it took to ensure that it turned out like that.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

...eu já estava na vigésima parte do livro, triste, quando senti que o livro podia ser escrito. Percebi que só seria capaz de escrevê-lo se o fizesse como se contasse. Não passando para a escrita o chamado discurso oral, porque isso é impossível, mas introduzindo na escrita um me-canismo de aparente prolixidade, aparente desor-ganização do discurso. Digo aparente porque sei o trabalho que me deu fazer de conta que era tudo assim.
Interview in Idéias, no. 107 (15 October 1988), trans. Margaret Jull Costa.

“You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

“So you never know who you touch. You never know how or when you'll have an impact, or how important your example can be to someone else" (20).”

Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer

Source: A Hand to Guide Me

“There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

“How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

“I am so afraid of people's words.
They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder
In Celebration of Me (1909)

“And that is all the Pope is saying to another human being. God made you the way you are, and loves you for it, and wants you to be happy as yourself. How much agony and pain has there been across so many centuries because we could not open our hearts to this truth? It is so strange to me how so many nonbelievers can see in this Pope’s interaction with others the spirit of Jesus, and how so many of the most devout seem terrified by it.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

“God Made You Like That” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/andrew-sullivan-why-we-should-say-yes-to-drugs.html, New York magazine (25 May, 2018)

“When I talk about cosmic laws I am not just referring to the greater contexts, such as the laws of polarity or resonance, but also to ideas like a proper diet and achieving a natural relationship between rest and activity. As humans, we were born omnivores with strong vegetarian tendencies. So we should not be surprised when, as we age, we develop conditions such as arteriosclerosis, rheumatism, etc., due to an exaggerated daily intake of protein. We are not abiding by the laws and have to pay for it. The fact that the majority of people ignores these laws does not change their validity.”

Ruediger Dahlke (1951) German physician and writer

Mandalas for Meditation (Sterling Publishing, 2001), pp. 10 https://books.google.it/books?id=Sq7h2sgA004C&pg=PA10-11.

“Here's the thing, it's the same person. It's just that some things that are appropriate on stage aren't appropriate at a dinner party, you know with a bunch of judges and lawyers. It's still saying how you feel, it's still being yourself, it's just knowing when and where. It's also knowing when to let someone else take the lead. That's exactly why Erika Jayne is so great, because when she's onstage, that's what she's supposed to do. To be over the top, to be peacocking. But it still resonates from the same place inside”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

me
Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Kevin Spacey 8

Related quotes

Related topics