Quote of the Day: Peter Shaffer on Art & Creativity

We like to pretend great cities are interchangeable, just different accents over the same ambition. But that’s the tourist’s lie. A place has a medium, a way it insists on being seen. That’s why Peter Shaffer’s line lands: “If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.” It isn’t a cute comparison; it’s a critique of how we flatten environments into slogans, and how those environments, in return, shape the pace of our inner life.

Watercolor is suggestion: light diluted, edges softened, meaning emerging through restraint. London, in Shaffer’s framing, isn’t trying to win your attention, it’s trying to seep into it. The city’s beauty operates through atmosphere: the hush of old stone, the patience of streets that remember too much, the way history hangs like weather. It invites a kind of humanity that notices what isn’t shouted.

Oil painting, by contrast, is declaration. Saturation, contrast, texture, everything insists on its own presence. New York’s drama is not subtle, and it doesn’t apologize for the spectacle: vertical lines, loud collisions, a daily audition for significance. That energy can be exhilarating or exhausting, but it is undeniably clarifying. It teaches ambition in high definition: you want something, you say it, you chase it, you pay for it.

Peter Shaffer, the playwright behind “Equus” and “Amadeus,” built a career on staging the clash between refinement and appetite, tradition and intensity. His work earned major awards and a lasting reputation for turning aesthetics into psychology.

July 24 doesn’t need a commemorative headline to make this useful. Apply it today by asking: are you living like watercolor, nuanced, patient, receptive, or like oil, bold, vivid, unignorable? Better yet, choose the medium that matches the moment, instead of letting the moment choose it for you.