"I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future. People who do not want writers to write about violence want to stop them writing about us and our time. It would be immoral not to write about violence."

Edward Bond Literature See all quotes by Edward Bond →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Edward Bond

“As Shakespeare himself knew, the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not last an hour on the street.”

“Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.”

“Art is the expression of the conviction that we can have a rational relationship with the world and each other. It isn't the faith or hope that we can, it is the demonstration that we can.”

Resonant Thoughts

"When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we …"

— Peter Matthiessen

Literature1927–2014

#time

"The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-f…"

— William James

Psychology1842–1910

#time

"In the final analysis alienation is, among other things a response to the frustration created by the lack of meaning in modern society. It has been pointed out often enough that politics takes on reli…"

— Paul Hollander

Literature1932–2019

#politics