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
We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Entertainment is constantly present in our lives, adapting to different contexts and mediums.
Mike Nichols highlights the omnipresence of entertainment in our daily activities, suggesting that it adapts to various settings such as bathrooms, trains, and homes. He acknowledges that while traditional forms like theater may have smaller audiences, the essence of entertainment continues to thrive through changing formats, like radio and beyond, emphasizing its enduring nature and the power it holds in our lives.
Themes
EntertainmentAdaptationTheaterRadioAudience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the evolution of media and entertainment.
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.'
Mike NicholsRead
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