Mike Nichols Great Quotations

I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both.

That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.

Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.

We've all heard those fatal words in a relationship where someone says, 'Just tell me. I promise I won't be mad. I just want the answer,' ... Clive Owen asks his wife that question in 'Closer,' but he really doesn't want the answer because it's just a slide into great pain.

A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That's a whole, thrilling new form that I really enjoy. They are Tolstoy-an in their endless character development and narrative changes... a show like 'Breaking Bad' is astonishing.

I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine.