"What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is"
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Miller’s line has the audacity of a stage magician explaining the trick while still keeping the room spellbound. He’s pushing back on the cozy idea that stories are detachable “content” you can pour from one container to another: book to film, English to French, Tolstoy to TikTok. For him, the real payload of literature isn’t the plot summary or the character “profile.” It’s the exact grain of the language - syntax, rhythm, register, the little hesitations and accelerations that make a person on the page feel alive.
The key move is almost theatrical: “characters” aren’t treated as imaginary people who happen to be described in sentences; they are fabricated by sentences, the way a performer is fabricated by timing, breath, and emphasis. Strip that away in translation and you don’t just lose flourishes, you lose ontology. The character’s substance evaporates because the character was never separate from the verbal performance in the first place.
As an entertainer who moved between medicine, directing, and television, Miller knew how brutally medium-specific meaning is. A Shakespeare soliloquy isn’t “the same” when paraphrased; it’s a different organism. The subtext is also a jab at modern cultural consumption: we love adaptations and summaries because they promise the pleasure without the labor. Miller insists the labor is the pleasure. Literature’s interest, he implies, is its resistance to being efficiently repackaged - its refusal to survive as mere information.
The key move is almost theatrical: “characters” aren’t treated as imaginary people who happen to be described in sentences; they are fabricated by sentences, the way a performer is fabricated by timing, breath, and emphasis. Strip that away in translation and you don’t just lose flourishes, you lose ontology. The character’s substance evaporates because the character was never separate from the verbal performance in the first place.
As an entertainer who moved between medicine, directing, and television, Miller knew how brutally medium-specific meaning is. A Shakespeare soliloquy isn’t “the same” when paraphrased; it’s a different organism. The subtext is also a jab at modern cultural consumption: we love adaptations and summaries because they promise the pleasure without the labor. Miller insists the labor is the pleasure. Literature’s interest, he implies, is its resistance to being efficiently repackaged - its refusal to survive as mere information.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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