"Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. In the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage, and why the theatre is always popular and indeed why it exists: why it is like life, and it is like life even though it is also the most vulgar and outrageously factitious of all the arts. [...]  the theatre, even at its most 'realistic' , is connected with the level at which, and the methods by which, we tell our everyday lies."

The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch