Dinklage made this declaration while listing the Bennington classmates he still worked with 22 years after graduation — Ian Bell, Justin Beath, John Matthews, Jim Shawn Hyland, and others. The message was that the most important professional relationships of your life might be sitting right next to you, not waiting for you somewhere in the future. He backed this up with his own biography: the theater company he co-founded with his classmate Ian Bell, the collaborations that continued for decades, and most personally, the fact that the friend he met on that rainy night at Bennington later introduced him to his wife. People always told him that for such a small school, Bennington seemed to produce an outsized number of working artists. His explanation was simple: 'We burn very brightly.' The plea 'please don't ever stop' was directed at the graduates' creative fire — the same fire that had sustained him through six years of data entry, a heatless loft in Williamsburg, and the long wait for the career he'd dreamed of since arriving at Bennington as a four-foot-something kid in a black velvet cape and combat boots.