I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history.
I trained in Shakespeare, and that's all comedy, even when it's tragedy.
Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious.
Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.
Greek tragedy was pre-Freudian, so every emotion has to be so raw; there are no psychological undertones.
A tragedy's first act is crowded with supporting players, policeman scribbling in pads and making radio calls, witnesses crimping their faces, EMS guys folding equipment.
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
'Big Time Rush' was a great show, and I had some great experiences. It allowed me to become more of a comedic actress, which is also a great skill to have. But there wasn't a whole lot of tragedy in there. Not quite as dark as 'Red Band Society.' So I've been very lucky to have been able to grow in that sense, just through moving to FOX.
I am very interested in that fine line between fiction and reality and between comedy and tragedy - and pushing the line as much as possible.
Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help. And he did it anonymously.
That's been the tragedy of my life, actually. I've always looked younger than I am.
Billy Martin was a human tragedy, in the real sense of the words.
All I can tell you is that I've never met a woman who is not strong, but sometimes they don't let it out. Then there's a tragedy, and then all of a sudden that strength comes. My message is let the strength come out before the tragedy.
Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
People ask me whether I see 'Star Wars' as a comedy or a tragedy, but it's really neither - it's partly a history, like 'Henry V,' and partly a fantasy, like 'The Tempest.'
What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.
The Lusitania is a monument to this optimism, to the hubris of the era. I love that, because where there is hubris, there is tragedy.
In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.
When you watch one person on stage trying to surmount their fate only in that very action to embody it, it's called a tragedy. When you see a lot of people doing it on stage, it's called 'Fawlty Towers.'
I learned early on that in the real world, the masks of tragedy and comedy adorn the proscenium of every life.
Well, I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal.
I often find in doing tragedy, or doing very serious material, that there's a level of anxiety that builds that often leads to laughter in some cases. In between takes, there can often be a lightness.
Easter is not limited to the passion and death of Christ; it also includes the dismal tragedy of life unlived by the many, and all the loss of passion and truth that goes with it.
In writing a little tragedy, 'The Gaol Gate,' I made the scenario in three lines, 'He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged.' I wrote that play very quickly.
'Greek Street' is a very strange beast. I think of it as 'The Long Good Friday' meets 'Agamemnon.' A way of using those fantastically rich stories from Greek tragedy to take a look at our world and to explore some of the things I think about this world.
What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.
Ever since it was announced that Ryan Murphy intended to produce 'The People v. O.J. Simpson,' I have been inundated with the question as to 'How do I feel about it?' All I can say is, for me, it was personally the most heartbreaking tragedy that altered my life forever.
Our position is extremely perilous; if we do not earnestly promote nationalism and weld together our four hundred millions into a strong nation, we face a tragedy - the loss of our country and the destruction of our race. To ward off this danger, we must espouse nationalism and employ the national spirit to save the country.
What having a Down's syndrome child isn't - and I feel very strongly about this - is a tragedy. All those pregnancy books you read when you are expecting refer to Down's syndrome as if it were the worst possible outcome, and it's not.
All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
Bad days will come for each one of us, and the more we've thought these things through ahead of time, the better prepared we'll be when tragedy strikes or struggles emerge.
The terrible tragedy for every director is to watch an actor do what you want and not have the camera rolling - and never get it back again. So I always try to roll the camera before anybody's really ready.
Tragedy is the oldest form of theatre.
Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful. There is nothing I can think of that is quite as isolating as this.
I've never had a very closely connected family. My parents split up when I was young and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.