Eric Bogosian Quotes

Adolf von Gordon's last words at the trial are ironic: I should be far from passing a final judgment on Talat the man. What can be said objectively I said at the start. But I do wish to state one more thing: like many of his comrades, he certainly worked for the extermination of the Armenian people in order to create a purely pan-Turkish state; he certainly here used means that seem intolerable to us Europeans.

We all know, either implicitly or explicitly, that all we really have is our place in the memories of others. We exist to the degree that we know and remember one another. Even the most isolated among us. We share a collective understanding that we are all part of a greater whole. Perhaps

I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work.

As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten.

Idealism is guilty middle-class bullshit.

It's a mental fake-out to myself. I make believe I'm making a new show so I forget the material I was working on and make up some fresh material.

I'm very underground.

For a long time, my shows were about people walking out or about getting my gigs canceled or having the presenter not wanting to pay me.

At least I admit that I don't know. I know that things are fucked up, beyond belief, and I have nothing original to say about it.

I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally.

Vision, of the Ittihadists and, by extension, Kemal Ataturk, did not include the non-Muslim population of what was once the Ottoman Empire.

Impact of this makeover has been to significantly impede historical research, and it is one of Ataturk's most devastating accomplishments.

Many devout Muslims, particularly in the east, understood that attacking helpless people, nonbelievers or not, was contrary to the tenets of Islam. Still, a vast number of Muslims saw the pronouncement of jihad as an endorsement for killing and looting.

From my perspective of a guy in his late forties, its becoming more and more clear to me that the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do all depend on what part of life you are looking at it from.

And if nobody ever hears from me again,
It would be okay,
And if nobody ever knows where I am,
I won't mind,
Because I would know where I am,
And than is the most important thing.

There is a larger lesson here, because the book encompasses not just the lives of prisoners in a Soviet prison camp, but every one of us. Shukhov squeezes everything he can out of a mouthful of soup or a bite of bread ... So frozen that he can't even feel his feet, he trowels cement and lays a cinder block wall with care and patience ... Shukhov takes pride in his work. In fact, even though he is starving, he can barely tear himself away at the end of the long day to go eat. He cares about his work and in that way he remains a man. Isn't this kind of pride and gratitude and ironic detachment valuable for all people?

Legislation was passed that seemed to welcome any surviving Armenians back to their homes, and at least on paper, Christians and Jews were to be treated like any other citizens in Turkey. But this was a very cold and toxic embrace. The Turkish government was no longer engaged in an organized system of deportation, but with Kemal's endorsement, the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia would continue.

He who kills even one unbeliever of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.

I'm not a light-hearted person, so I can't think light-hearted at work.

I don't know anybody who does what I do. I'm very underground.

I'm a first class passenger on the Spaceship Earth, and I got one ticket. And I gotta make the ride count, you know? And, as far as I figure, you can either take the service road or the scenic route. And, man, if I only have one ride, I want it to be beautiful.
84. Highway.

The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well.

I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975.

It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

I'm not hip, I'm not cool, I'm not glib.

British prime minister William Gladstone summed up the West's opinion of "the Turk": Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline, what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mahometanism simply, but of Mahometanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mahometans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view.

If we all knew we were going to live to be 150 years old, we'd all approach our lives very differently.