I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world.
Interpretation
Writers often do care about reviews, despite claiming otherwise, and those reviews can be unexpectedly critical.
In this quote, Tom Stoppard expresses the common struggle among writers regarding the opinion of critics and readers. He acknowledges that while many writers may proclaim indifference towards reviews, the truth is that they are deeply affected by them, especially when feedback diverges from their expectations. The candidness in his admission highlights the inherent vulnerability of creatives who seek validation in their work, emphasizing that acceptance of critique is part of the artistic journey.
In practice
In a panel discussion about the impact of reviews on writers' mental health.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Who says that fictions only and false hair_x000D_ Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?_x000D_ Is all good structure in a winding stair?
If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying.
The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously.
Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.
With age, art and life become one.
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