A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
Mike NicholsRead
If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The loss of a parent is a lasting pain that endures throughout life.
This quote expresses the profound and lingering impact of losing a parent. It highlights the emotional struggle and longing that can persist even into adulthood, demonstrating how the absence of a parent can shape one's thoughts and dreams throughout life.
Themes
LossParentGriefLongingMemory
In practice
Example use cases
During a family gathering, you might share this quote to express the enduring feelings of missing a lost parent.
More from Mike Nichols
All quotes →There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
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You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
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The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
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I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
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Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
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