August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg; 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth22 January 1849
CityStockholm, Sweden
CountrySweden
No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.
Because in the midst of happiness there is always a seed of unhappiness; it consumes itself like fire--it can't burn forever, sooner or later it must die; and this presentiment of the end destroys my happiness when it is at is height.
It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly haven't the true faith.
I, too, am beginning to feel an immense need to become a savage and create a new world.
A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.
In the old days, one married a wife; now one forms a company with a female partner, or moves in to live with a friend. And then one seduces the partner, or defiles the friend.
God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people's secrets we want to know - it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.
I've thought of becoming a photographer! To save my talent as a writer.
There comes a moment... When imagination gives out and Reality leaps forth. It is frightful!
[My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul
When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!
Some people have accused my tragedy of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy. People clamor for Enjoyment as though Enjoyment consisted in being foolish. I find enjoyment in the powerful and terrible struggles of life; and the capability of experiencing something, of learning something, gives me pleasure.
When aristocrats pretend they're common people -- they get common!
When people drink, they talk, and talk is dangerous!