I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an author's tendency to over-write, suggesting a struggle between brevity and creativity.
In this quote, Tom Stoppard humorously acknowledges the challenge of expressing ideas concisely in writing. He admits to the temptation of crafting lengthy scenes when, in fact, a more succinct approach would suffice, highlighting the balance between artistic expression and the clarity of communication.
In practice
In a workshop on writing, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of brevity in storytelling.
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.
How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.
Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.
The way I would describe a pictorial is that it is a picture that makes everybody say ‘Aaaaah,’ with five vowels when they see it. It is something you would like to hang on the wall. The french word ‘photogenique’ defines it better than anything in English. It is a picture which must have quality, drama, and it must, in addition, be as good technically as you can possible make it.
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work.
I believe that good television should be challenging and frustrating and maddening and thrilling. If you just want to see people who look like you and think like you and do what you would do in any given situation, you'd have to stop looking at TV and start looking in a mirror. But would that be as much fun?
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