There is no reason why a joke should not be appreciated more than once. Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a conductor refused to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the ground that his audience might have heard it before.
We never pay anyone Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!
I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.
When you're young and you play music, you have a peer group, you come out of a scene. There's a lot of people you know, and then you have some success, and it all goes away.
If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.
QUINCE Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. FLUTE Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE Flute, you must take Thisby on you. FLUTE What is Thisby? a wandering knight? QUINCE It is the lady that Pyramus must love. FLUTE Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.