“[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.” PeopleWorldPlayAudiencePlaywrightChekhov Author:Robert Dessaix
“The extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignificant . What art can do is make the extraordinary more ordinary and ordinary more extraordinary.” PeopleWritingLongArtTermCan DoOrdinaryExtraordinaryInsignificantOrdinary PeopleLiterary Terms Author:Robert Dessaix
“I think that a lot of people do have a physical Ithaca, but I don't think that I do and I think that a lot of people do not. This depends on your values and the circumstances of your life. My Ithaca is in the Mental realm and this doesn't mean that you don't have to go back to it.” PeopleThinkingMeanValuesDependsCircumstancesRealms Author:Robert Dessaix
“I want to write the sort the book that my people want to read, even if the market is small.” PeopleIfsWantWritingBook Author:Robert Dessaix
“When I re-read the Odyssey, it felt like I was reading PD James or Minette Walters - you feel that you are sharing in something that hundreds of millions of people have read with love, and I think that this is worth holding onto. It is not a matter of canonical texts or elitism, which the universities are trying to make us wary about. It is about shared language and metaphor and experience and imagery and that is all good.” PeopleThinkingFeelsTryingMatterReadingLanguageFeltMillionsUniversityMetaphorImageryHolding OnElitismOdyssey Author:Robert Dessaix
“One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels.” PeopleFeelsWritingFactsCoursesNovelCreativeDegreesPreparedUniversityOfferingUnfortunateCreative WritingIncentivesImpatientUnfortunate Things Author:Robert Dessaix
