Top 944 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Playwrights - Page 3
Explore popular quotes by famous playwrights.
When he asked me, with obvious self-satisfaction, what I thought of the scenario, I hardly knew how to answer. I asked if he had seen the play and was hardly surprised when he said no.
One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.
One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
I have had just about all I can take of myself.
The absent are always in the wrong
Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol.
Hollywood is, I always argue, has a great track record of making good films.
There's a strange thing goes on inside a bubble. It's hard to describe. People who are in it can't see outside of it, don't believe there is an outside.
I would not change very much about the American theater. I marvel and rejoice in the way the country's regional theaters have formed a network that has become, in essence, our National Theater.
The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity to which others are trying to prove him wrong.
Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.
I begin to perceive that I am a woman. What that is, heaven knows... the philosophy is yet to be written, there is a world to be explored.
If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it; it will make you a person in your own right.
Psychoanalysts and elephants, they never forget.
Some can just knock it out and some have to lock themselves in a room and get to a fever pitch of self-loathing before they turn in a first draft. . . . each writer's process is screwed up in its own way.
. . . the cruel part is that, to let the play live, you have to surrender control and let your characters go. You have to let them stumble, fall into walls and be mute, let them drift and be lost. If you hold the reins too tight, they won't spring to life.
There's the inherent value of the arts in terms of what that does for the quality of life and culture. The arts - in my case theater, play-writing - is all about community.
He who strays discovers new paths.
If you're in despair, you don't know how to be part of your own life anymore.
No honest work of man or woman "fails"; it feeds the sum of all human action.
In spring a young mans fancy turns to a fancy young man.
I think any film that is based on life or real events you want it to be accurate but what really matters is that it's truthful. That is not always the same thing. You really want to convey the spirit of the enterprise rather than ticking every single factual box.
Good posture and an attitude let you get away with anything.
A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.
[Using humor to explore serious issues] disarms people. It's a way in. It's gentle, but at the same time it's subversive, and I like that duality.
This is the Scroll of Thoth. Herein are set down the magic words by which Isis raised Osiris from the dead. Oh! Amon-Ra--Oh! God of Gods--Death is but the doorway to new life--We live today-we shall live again--In many forms shall we return-Oh, mighty one.
I’ve spent too many years explaining who and what I am repeatedly, so as of this moment I officially secede from both races. I plan to start my own separate nation. Because I am half Ojibway and half Caucasian, we will be called the Occasions. And of course, since I’m founding the new nation, I will be a Special Occasion.
If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line; try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it... better.
. . I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last. In my experience, they want no real representations of homosexuality, they want no complexity, they are terrified of ambiguity and unanswered questions - they don't know what they want, except that they want to make lots of money. The only freedom I've ever had as an artist has been in the theatre.
I've found that the only way to make theatre that gets the audience thinking is when I feel uncomfortable making it.
I'd forgotten how arrogant people are in the theater, I'm agreeing to starve for a year and he seems to think I should be pleased to have the part.
I'm like a blue-collar writer. I just sit down every day and I write.
We can only do what is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.
Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.
What I find most appalling is the Senate calls it a qualified blind trust when it's not blind. Since the Senate says it's OK, the Senate has made it a political question. It's up to the voter. But there's no doubt it's a conflict of interest.
No matter what you're doing, you're never 100 percent about anything. Every choice is always accompanied by a certain amount of worry or doubt. Until it reaches a certain threshold, you don't act on it; you just sort of carry it with you, and wait to see if it reaches the threshold when you should act. Otherwise, you just become one of those worrywarts, a nervous Nellie who isn't very helpful.
the present is the merest flicker between the long long time past and the things that haven't yet happened but most assuredly will.
. . . I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. . . . At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.
Yes, the first draft is the key. That's why I put so much energy, focus, and attention on the first draft, because I respect that first go at the story. If I don't have the key in that first draft, I invariably won't get it in subsequent drafts, though I can craft around it.
He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.
As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature.
A fault is sooner found than mended.
In ancient cultures, they didn*t practice theory in their dances; they wanted to arrive at a state of trance, and I think that's an appropriate approach for the arts: to create a work that is entrancing.
All water is holy water.
No matter how great the script, the actual film will only be a distant relative of it - it will never be an identical twin.
Writing can be a lifeline, especially when your existence has been denied, especially when you have been left on the margins, especially when your life and process of growth have been subjected to attempts at strangulation.
If we cannot be decent, let us endeavor to be graceful. If we can't be moral, at least we can avoid being vulgar.
Time was made for slaves.
Humour breaks down boundaries, it topples our self-importance, it connects people, and because it engages and entertains, it ultimately enlightens.
Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character.
There's nothing as beautiful and empowering in life than a memory.
When I hear the word 'culture,' I get out my revolver.
Reading is the journey of those who can not take the train
One must choose, in life, between making money and spending it. There's no time to do both.
A fool is very dangerous when in power.
It's all papers and forms, the entire Civil Service is like a fortress made of papers, forms and red tape.
There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.
I would have thought he would be there out of just plain curiosity. It was incredible that he was missing.
I've never tried to define my states of mind when I write.
So I wanted to write a play that put some thoughts and feelings in the air about the miracle and the mystery and that alluded to deep and unknown forces. But then really just have people going to the store and fixing the sink and going through the normal things of looking for love and getting up in the morning. Because that's how we live.
