Peter Shaffer Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Peter Shaffer

  Life, People, Inspire

  Peter Shaffer (1982). “The Collected Plays of Peter Shaffer”, Random House Value Pub

  48 Copy quote

• And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.

  Peter Shaffer

  Children, Thinking, Purpose

  29 Copy quote

• Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

  Peter Shaffer

  Two, Tragedy, Different

  10 Copy quote

• Everything we feel is made of Time. All the beauties of life are shaped by it.

  Peter Shaffer

  Beauty Of Life, Made, Feels

  Peter Shaffer (1982). “The Collected Plays of Peter Shaffer”, Random House Value Pub

  9 Copy quote

• Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.

  Peter Shaffer

  Art, Goodness, Furnaces

  Peter Shaffer (1993). “Amadeus: A Drama”, Samuel French, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• I was an accomplice in my own frustration.

  Peter Shaffer

  Frustration, Accomplices, My Own

  17 Copy quote

• Love is the only doorway from the prison of ourselves.

  Peter Shaffer

  Love Is, Doorways, Prison

  5 Copy quote

• I think people nowadays do tend to blame their parents for everything.

  Peter Shaffer

  Thinking, People, Parent

  7 Copy quote

• I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

  Peter Shaffer

  Moving, Book, Writing

  10 Copy quote

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

  Peter Shaffer

  Heart, Eye, Grieving

  Peter Shaffer (2011). “Equus”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  16 Copy quote

• 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!

  Peter Shaffer

  Husband, Caring, Boys

  "Equus". Book by Peter Shaffer, 1973.

  5 Copy quote

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

  Peter Shaffer

  Passion, Doctors, Medical

  Equus (1973) act 2, sc. 35

  7 Copy quote

• What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at Absolute Beauty.

  Peter Shaffer

  Fall, Ink, Would Be

  "Amadeus". Play by Peter Shaffer, November 2, 1979.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Shaffer

  Imagination, Leave Me Alone, Never Quit

  4 Copy quote

• It is very, very difficult for a playwright to write a scene in which a young man has his first deep experience of sex with a girl whom he found immensely attractive, is fully satisfied by this event and gets up and blinds a lot of horses.

  Peter Shaffer

  Girl, Horse, Sex

  16 Copy quote

• What use, after all, is man, if not to teach God His lessons?

  Peter Shaffer

  Men, Use, Lessons

  Peter Shaffer (1981). “Amadeus”

  5 Copy quote

• You have your words, and I have mine.

  Peter Shaffer

  Mines

  4 Copy quote

• The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.

  Peter Shaffer

  Children, Eye, Adults

  'Equus' (1973) act 1, sc. 19

  7 Copy quote

• A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave.

  Peter Shaffer

  Children, World, Born

  Peter Shaffer (2011). “Equus”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes- all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills- like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made leathal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health.

  Peter Shaffer

  Beautiful, Children, Eye

  'Equus' (1973) act 1, sc. 19

  8 Copy quote

• Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that. I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for 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. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist.

  Peter Shaffer

  Mother, Real, Kids

  Peter Shaffer (2011). “Equus”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• All reined up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump clean-hoofed on to a whole new track of being I only suspect is there. I can't see it, because my educated, average head is being held at the wrong angle. I can't jump because the bit forbids it, and my own basic force - my horsepower, if you like - is too little.

  Peter Shaffer

  Average, Track, Littles

  Peter Shaffer (2011). “Equus”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.

  Peter Shaffer

  Couple, Stupid, Eye

  8 Copy quote

• Librarians as a race tend to be tedious.

  Peter Shaffer

  Race, Librarian, Tedious

  6 Copy quote

• The devil isn't made by what Mommy says or what Daddy says. The devil is there.

  Peter Shaffer

  Daddy, Devil, Made

  "Equus". www.imdb.com. 1977.

  7 Copy quote

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