I want to write the sort the book that my people want to read, even if the market is small.
Robert DessaixThe extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignificant . What art can do is make the extraordinary more ordinary and ordinary more extraordinary.
Robert DessaixIn the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that what you are seeing is repeatable.
Robert DessaixEvery time you watch a performance in the theatre, you know that this is just for you, and will never be the same again. It is quite exciting for me.
Robert DessaixWhen I re-read the Odyssey, it felt like I was reading PD James or Minette Walters - you feel that you are sharing in something that hundreds of millions of people have read with love, and I think that this is worth holding onto. It is not a matter of canonical texts or elitism, which the universities are trying to make us wary about. It is about shared language and metaphor and experience and imagery and that is all good.
Robert Dessaix