Quotes from Peter Shaffer

We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren't—we don't like it!

You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me.

He knows no physics or engineering to make the world real to him… no paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it… no music except television jingles… no history except tales from a desperate mother… no friends to give him a joke or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist.

At home we can say to our ladies: 'I love you', or to our native earth. It means we rejoice in their lives....Love must be free, or else it alters away. Command it to your court: it will send a deputy.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs - it sucks - it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles.

I have been listening to the cats in the courtyard. They are all singing Rossini. It is obvious that cats have declined as badly as composers. Domenico Scarlatti owned one which would actually stroll across the keyboard and pick out passable subjects for fugue. But that was a Spanish cat of the Enlightenment. It appreciated counterpoint. Nowadays all cats appreciate are coloratura. Like the rest of the Public.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. [...] Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles.

Look! Life is only comprehensible through a thousand local gods.

What shall I say to you who will one day hear this last act for yourselves? You will—because whatever else shall pass away, this must remain.

To go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!

Wicked, and — of course, perceptive.

There's a sea—a great sea—I love . . . It's where the Gods go to bathe.' 'What Gods?' 'The old ones. Before they died.' 'Gods don't die.' 'Yes, they do.

It both sustains and kills—like a God.

His pain. His own. He made it.

Look ... to go through life and call it yours -- your life -- you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!

Azt mondják, Isten nem csúfoltatik meg. Én meg azt mondom, ne csúfoltassék meg az ember!

The trouble is if you don't spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.

If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.

Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.

He'll be delivered from madness. What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him! ... My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost!

Look... to go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!'...

What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over, does it?

Can you think of anything worse one can do to anybody than take away their worship?

You have your words, and I have mine.