Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.
The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.
I have enough money to get by. I'm not independently wealthy, just independently lazy, I suppose.
