Diana Rigg Quotes

I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.

I don't mean to be oily, but critics are very much part of the theatre.

The richness of an artist is the fusion of influences that have shaped his life and work.

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

I couldn't tell how many times I've been to Japan off the top of my head, I just have a few standout moments that were very defining and inspirational at different parts of my life. As far as moving there, I don't know. That's a tall order there. I feel there's people that go so far as to do that, and good for them, but I just can't. For me it's not a misplaced passion or a weird infatuation - it's more like I've just had a good chance to realize how immensely their art has affected our American culture, and I don't take it for granted. I've got a very big appreciation.

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another.

Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganizes society and creates constituencies of people around it.

His [Andy warhol] films were way ahead of the times...and I'm not suggesting this has all necessarily been a good thing for America, mind you. I kind of think we're all in a really big mess, kind of like the end days of the Roman Empire.

I was playing guitar before I heard The Beatles, but as I got older and listened to their tunes I realized they were amazing. They inspire me more now than they did when I was a kid and are still the greatest.

I don't know if I know anyone, with the exception of the early inventors of rock music [who wasn't influenced by something].

You see so many people doing quite nice and respectful work, but nobody like Warhol. Warhol is outstanding. I think he has a value that is far from fully understood. He's very special for younger generations.

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

Literature usually begets literature.

A lot of times, in music especially, it's producers making a political decision.

I was a fan of Andy's since I was a small kid. I recall seeing an ad of famous people on an airplane together. It was caricature drawing. There was Muhammad Ali, there was Miles Davis, and there was Andy Warhol. I had a fascination with him since I was little.

Nothing really affected me until Elvis.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal ... its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities.

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

Art is a self-replicating force.

Shakespeare is the Joss Whedon of his generation.

Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie. "You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him. "Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey.

I think it's maybe because Sergeant Pepper's came out when I was about 13 or 14 and that was a pretty impressionable age, and it was such a kind of radical period. But that period of the Beatles really had a big influence on me and I think are directly related to hyperinstruments.

My my, hey hey... Rock and roll is here to stay. Hey hey, my my... Rock and roll will never die.

I got a book token for Christmas and exchanged it for a book called A History of Art, and that book (which I still have-battered and falling to pieces) became more precious to me than any Bible.