Edward Bond's Quotes

At the turn of the century theatre does not have to be prescriptive.

In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice.

Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society.

Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.

Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.

First there was the theatre of people and animals, then of people and the devil. Now we need the theatre of people and people.

Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.

I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.

I'm interested in the real world.

I'm not interested in an imaginary world.

If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond.

In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.

It seems to me that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves.

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human.

Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done.

Shakespeare has no answers for us at all.

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.

The Greeks said very, very extreme things in their tragedies.

The human mind is a dramatic structure in itself and our society is absolutely saturated with drama.

The one overall structure in my plays is language.