3 Uses of the Knife

Often in our writing we strive for perfection, for completion, and yet perfection is boring. It is the oddities and imperfections that we remember in the end.

Stanislavsky says as much in this quote I found in David Mamet's "3 Uses of the Knife."

      "There are plays that you leave, and you say to yourself, “By God, I just, I never, gosh, I want to, now I understand! What a masterpiece! Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” and by the time you get home, you can’t remember what the play was about. "

       "And there are plays—and books and songs and poems and dances—that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.