I've been very fortunateit's just been an amazing piece of luck. I haven't had to suffer for my art but I've suffered enough inside to hopefully be called an artist.
Interpretation
The quote expresses gratitude for good fortune in one's artistic journey while acknowledging inner struggles that contribute to artistic identity.
Christopher Plummer highlights the duality of being an artist: the external luck that can aid in a successful career, contrasted with the internal challenges and emotional experiences that shape one's artistry. While he recognizes that he has not faced significant external hardships, he implies that the internal suffering is what lends authenticity and depth to his work as an artist, making his experiences all the more meaningful.
In practice
This quote can be used during an art exhibition to discuss the role of luck and emotional experiences in artistic expression.
I was always a happy kid. I'd play the piano fairly well. I did all sorts of things fairly well. But who the hell wants to be happy all the time? It's a miserable state to be in permanently. Can you imagine how dreary that would be?
A lot of people want to retire; I couldn't. You don't retire in our business. What, play golf and watch television? Oh, please.
I think anger does fuel a successful acting career. To play the great roles, you have to learn how to blaze.
Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.
I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.
Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
When music is crashing around us, when you hear the same five songs on the radio that aren't really saying much, we can always go back to great music. Great music always lives on.
I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting...I quite like to be in that maze.
It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating ones own creativity - thats a much tougher matter.
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.
What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.