Quotes from David Hare

No single move traps the king.

the world was created this morning. No such thing as the past …

We appealed to the conscience of the world. The world has no conscience. We have no one but ourselves. The fight. The struggle. The historic destiny. The return of the people. The cause: life therefore having a meaning and shape that eludes the rest of us in the endless wash of 'What the hell are we doing here?' In a single day, says an Israeli friend, he experiences events and emotions that would keep a Swede going for a year.

No one but a fool is always right.

Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

Oh damn and fuck show business and all its ways.

Toby. - It was how I was always told you could get women into bed. By doing something called 'listening to their problems'. It's a contemptible tactic. Kyra. - You wouldn't do it? Toby. - No. Of course not. You know me, Kyra. I wouldn't stoop to it. Either they want you or else they don't. Listening's halfway to begging.

Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

America is a crippled giant, England is a sick gnome.

As Michael Cunningham would later write in his novel The Hours, I thought what I was feeling was the beginning of happiness. In fact, it was happiness.

Edward   Once they're dead, I find they keep changing. You think you've got hold of them. And it's like you say, 'Oh I see. So that's what she was like.' But then they change again in your memory. It drives you crazy. Now I'd like to find out just who she was.

We had six years of happiness. And it was you who had to spoil it. With you, when something is right, it's never enough. You don't value happiness. You don't even realize. Because you always want more. (She

If anything has been my salvation as a human being it is this choice of an activity which is, at the deepest level, out of my hands. What a relief! What a blessing! Better still, it had always been a drawback to see life differently from other people. In childhood, it had brought me little but heartache. Now I had stumbled on a profession in which it was an asset. 7 Five Good Scenes At the Royal Court, at any one moment, we had stacks of plays being considered.

Kyra: I always felt profoundly at peace. I don't know why, it still seems true to me: if you have a love, which for any reason you can't talk about, your heart is with someone you can't admit - not to a single soul except for the person involved - then for me, well, I have to say, that's love at its purest. For as long as it lasts, it's this astonishing achievement. Because it's always a relationship founded in trust. Tom: It seems mad to me.

The most dementing of all modern sins: the inability to distinguish excellence from success.

People always say that in England we lead shallow lives. Our lives must be shallow because we live in a country where nobody believes in anything any more. My whole life, I've been told: 'Western civilization? An old bitch gone in the teeth,' And so people say, go to Israel. Because in Israel at least people are fighting. In Israel, they're fighting for something they believe in.

We live in a country which is spavined with ancestor- worship. This country will never, can never prosper until it escapes from its past.

What is a city? What should it be? Why do we live in groups? What do we want from cities? And who decides?

Why trample on a flower when you don't need to?

The one thing that 'Via Dolorosa' has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.

The future of American film lies on television.