Daily Inspiration Quote by Edward Bond

Bond’s refusal is a theatrical power move disguised as modesty. “It’s insulting” doesn’t just swat away a journalist’s question; it challenges the whole interview-industrial habit of treating art like a puzzle with an official answer key. By calling the question an insult, Bond implies that asking for “the view” of a play is really asking the playwright to shrink it into a thesis statement - to turn a living event into a tidy opinion that can be quoted, marketed, and safely consumed.

“I have no opinion” is the dagger twist. Of course he has opinions; his work is famously political and morally abrasive. The line performs a distinction Bond cares about: a play isn’t an argument the author holds, it’s an experience the audience undergoes. Opinion belongs to the realm of commentary and punditry; drama, in his framing, belongs to the realm of action, consequence, and unresolved pressure. He’s insisting that meaning in theatre is produced in the room, between bodies, not extracted from the playwright’s head like a confession.

Context matters: Bond emerges from postwar British theatre that distrusted genteel ambiguity but also distrusted cozy liberal “messages.” His plays force viewers into ethical discomfort, often through violence, to expose how society manufactures cruelty. If he summarized “his view,” he’d give audiences a moral escape hatch: agree, disagree, move on. By refusing, Bond protects the play’s autonomy and the spectator’s responsibility. The insult, finally, is to the audience - to assume they can’t meet the work without the author holding their hand.