“... you can also be sure that, no matter how many heroic remedies the playwright invents, ninety-nine drama critics out of a hundred will declare the suicide is absurd and the play unbelievable.
For life, happily filled with shameless absurdities, has the rare privilege of being able to ignore credibility, whereas art feels called upon to pay attention to it.
Life's absurdities don't have to seem believable, because they are real. As opposed to art's absurdities which, to seem real, have to be believable. Then, when they are believable, they are no longer absurd.
An event in life may be absurd; a work of art, if it is a work of art, cannot be.
It therefore follows that to criticize, in the name of life, a work of art for being absurd and unbelievable is sheer stupidity.
In the name of art, yes. But not in the name of life.”