Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.
That's why I'm never happy. Every tragedy, I really feel very painful - especially about a child or old people. This is reality. We try to close eyes and ears, but it's happening every second, and somehow, unfortunately, I feel a connection.
The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.
Good comedy films, if you listen to the score, the music is not trying to be funny. It's always, in a way, underscoring the tragedy and struggle of the main character.
My bones are tired from all the tragedy in me.
The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out.
There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.
Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture.
It is a tragedy indeed that new generations, taking office, attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it.
More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.
I think comedy is drama, often. It's hard to have comedy over a period of time - commercials are one thing, but over a period of time - comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.
I feel like there should be a statute of limitations on scoring political points on the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina.
We must stop criminalizing mental illness. It's a national tragedy and scandal that the L.A. County Jail is the biggest psychiatric facility in the United States.
It is easy to lay the blame on successive governments for failing to address health as a fundamental right for the Indian people. But the real tragedy is that we, the people of India, have not taken our government to task for this catastrophic failure.
My mother's songs are really turning out to be masterpieces. I have inherited this incredible legacy and am so fortunate to bathe in her sensibilities. It is tinged with tragedy. I'd much rather she was here in person, but there is still a positive force to come out of her death and that is having the gift of music that she gave.
Occupation is the Palestinian people's tragedy, but also Israel's present. We must liberate both people from the occupation.
The greatest tragedy in life is that some prayers go unanswered as they go unasked.
Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.
Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.
There's always a sense of tragedy with icons. It happened to both the Princess of Wales and Diana Dors. A lot of people had grown up with them, and everybody loved them. Then, when they had at last found happiness, they were taken in the most dreadful way.
Things happen to everybody in the course of a lifetime. Relationships end, people die, tragedy befalls everyone. So everyone has this wealth of experience, and the older you are the more you have to draw on.
Tragedy takes us to the very state of consciousness which, were we to hold to it, would go far toward preventing further tragedies.
When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'
It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust.
When tragedy strikes, or even when it looms, our families will have the opportunity to look into our hearts to see whether we know what we said we knew. Our children will watch, feel the Spirit confirm that we lived as we preached, remember that confirmation, and pass the story across the generations.
A lot of mixed-race stories are these navel-gazing, horrible accounts of mulatto tragedy.
Unemployment is a great tragedy. The man who goes about hopelessly seeking work in order to earn bread for his children is a living reproach to civilization.
