The job of the dramatist is to get, and that of the actors and directors to keep, the asses in the seats. Period. That is what pays the rent. Whatever an individual may have to say, it will not be heard unless the audience is (a) there and (b) paying attention. And no one pays attention to anything that bores them. Why should they? You won’t, I won’t.

We would all do well to take heed.

Here are some of my favorite passages:

“A great partnership is a lab where change happens every day.”

“In any collaboration, no one likes to let colleagues down. Crisis focuses energy. When it really matters, people rise to the occasion.”

“All artists have signatures. Most guard them closely. And again and again, I’ve found that really smart and talented people don’t hoard the secrets of their success – they share them. It ain’t as if you could use their methods and duplicate their results. Excellence is about so much more than craft.”

“The more you ask, the more you get back. The more you challenge an audience, the moe challenging you can be to yourself.”

And finally, my favorite:

“In the end, all collaborations are love stories.”

Go buy the book.

The desire to collect art begins with attraction. There’s an urge to be near a thing of beauty, and over time, when you’re with something like that, with something beautiful, a relationship begins to form, and that relationship begins to have a meaning, and it’s meant to. A work of art is meant to have an effect, and it does, and the original desire changes from simply wanting to be near the beauty to wanting to possess it, wanting to be so close to it that some of the beauty rubs off.

- John Haskell from the novel Out of My Skin