I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.
Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used that tragic event as a justification to rip up our constitution and our civil liberties. And I honestly believe that one or two 9/11s, and martial law will be declared in our country and we're inching towards a police state.
I didn't wish those tragedies upon the people who played them out. It was certainly tragic for them, but not for me. All of those things brought me to where I am. Without those things, I couldn't be who I am, I wouldn't be here.
The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'
Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.
I sometimes think it's like a weird elastic band. The more tragic your work is, the quicker you snap back. There's a catharsis in telling a miserable old tale; you get rid of demons.
Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?
It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman.
The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic.
There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.
My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.
There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.
I'd like to start writing scripts. I think I'd probably be inclined to write a very dark comedy or a tragic romance. As a kid, I used to write really dark stuff.
What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character.
I had long known the story of Aaron Burr, but when I heard about his remarkable daughter, Theodosia, about the relationship between the two and about her tragic disappearance, I knew I wanted to tell their story.
The refusal to acknowledge the scientific value of embryonic stem cell research is one more tragic misstep.
I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this.
People evolve and grow, and life is fascinating and fun and tragic.
It is hard to look away from the swirl of media that the untimely and tragic death of Heath Ledger has engendered, and the Internet has jacked the frenzy into overdrive.
There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
It seems that Argentina is incapable of looking critically at its tragic military adventure in the Falklands.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
I've had a lot of tragic hairdos and outfits.
I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.
The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.
'Mr. Peanut' is not about a man who dreams of killing his wife; that's jacket copy, to me. 'Mr. Peanut' is about the dynamism of marriage and the distances - some tragic, some redemptive - that marriages travel over time, and those travels ain't always pretty.
There are so many great characters because one of the things that makes Batman fantastic is that Batman is tragic. I've said this elsewhere; I've said it over and over again, but the beauty of the character is that he's a Don Quixote.
'Fargo' is a tragedy with a happy ending. So you need to have that tragic underpinning, that all of this could be avoidable, and that's what makes it tragic. It's about the use of violence, and the fact that the tension in anticipation of violence and the tension in anticipation of a laugh are sort of the same.
Restoring the rights of individuals who have served their time and reentered society is the right thing to do. Virginia's felon disenfranchisement policy is rooted in a tragic history of voter suppression and marginalization of minorities, and it needs to be overturned.
Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.
I don't think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.
Sometimes in the most tragic situation, something just profoundly funny happens.
The whole campaign was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
I love the tragic side. I don't do 'happy' onstage. I like the dark, the disturbed.
