The financial crisis happened because no-one could actually say out loud how bad things were. — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Twenty years ago, when you bumped into someone and asked how they were, they would say, 'Mustn't grumble' or 'Getting by': now they feel… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
The American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has written about this in her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (2009) . She talks about the happiness industry, the rise of medication to make us happy and of self-help books, and the influence of all this on religion. In many ways religion has become another form of… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share
The title's so upfront. It gives fair warning about the play's content. I'm writing about a kind of disenchantment, an anger, but quite a cool 90's anger, at a time when we're not very good at openly being angry. . . . I don't think I ever thought the title was titillating. I thought it was incredibly catchy. If the… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share
There is a remarkable nimbleness of style, a balancing act of tone, in Voltaire, which is hard to bring off on stage. When you… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
I have adapted the whole book [Candid] into tweets of 140 characters, and these are being sent out daily, at the rate of eight… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
In the business world, the idea of positive thinking is absolutely entrenched. — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Theatre within theatre, when characters sees themselves on stage, always raises philosophical questions of choice and free will. — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Even within single sentences, there are sudden changes of register. And when the travellers go to Venice, they see a play by Voltaire! This… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
There is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming… — Mark Ravenhill Copy Share Image
![“I have adapted the whole book [Candid] into tweets of 140 characters, and these are being sent out daily, at the rate of eight tweets per day .” quote by Mark Ravenhill](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/77b/mark-ravenhill-28127_140-character_i-have-adapted-the-whole-book-candid-int_1119776.jpg)
![“Even within single sentences, there are sudden changes of register. And when the travellers go to Venice, they see a play by Voltaire! This is a novel [Candid] which has narratives within narratives, such as when Cunégonde recounts her story.” quote by Mark Ravenhill](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d9a/mark-ravenhill-28127_books_even-within-single-sentences-there-are-s_1366468.jpg)
![“There is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming couplets, with echoes of Pope and the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical verse.” quote by Mark Ravenhill](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/628/mark-ravenhill-28127_beats_there-is-the-question-of-language-althou_1657954.jpg)