Talking about Busted Flush the Wild Cards novel, Interview on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2008/12/interview-with-george-r-r-martin-and.html (December 2008)
Context: With great power comes great responsibility, Stan Lee once wrote. Spidey's credo articulates the basic premise of every superhero universe, including ours. But Lord Acton wrote that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The tension between those two truths is where the drama comes in. My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight.
“Life is a blessing for those who are able to appreciate it, and a misfortune for those who fail to make sense of it.
Some know what they are looking for and fighting for. Others just live without any pretensions.
But life forces everyone to struggle in their own way. Some succeeded, some failed.
Some end in bitter and sad tragedies. Others make life a funny and entertaining comedy.
Everything cannot be separated from the choices they make. It all depends on how they view and interpret their own lives.”
Related quotes
On art versus life in “Berkeley world premiere for Naomi Iizuka play” https://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/Berkeley-world-premiere-for-Naomi-Iizuka-play-3271229.php in SF Gate (2010 Mar 4)
From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM
The New York Times, April 19, 1992, "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html by Richard B. Woodward
Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 7 : Passion for Form, p. 127
“Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”
Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel — a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
Variant: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.
“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.”
Source: I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight
“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”