Top 944 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Playwrights - Page 14

The tools I handle are words. They may be unappreciated or misunderstood, but they tell us who we are.

I am drawn to Americana, and I am drawn to gothic stories, and I love American gothic stories.

I just want the actors to put their faith in the language. Just let the words do the work.

I'm of the school 'Write what you know.' You can educate yourself, but the best writing usually comes from the heart.

You don't work as hard to watch a movie. You work harder to watch a play, so what the audience puts into it is interesting.

The imagination is a place all by itself. A separate country. Now, you've heard of the French nation, the British nation. Well, this is the Imagi-nation. It's a wonderful place.

If a nation wants to live in peace with its neighbors, it doesn't keep rattling the saber at them.

One of the good thing about theater in the states, is that the playwright we do have a say, especially in the beginning, when the play is being discussed around the table. We talk about the play, and the actors listen, and there have been cases, you disagree on something... I mean, actors don't usually tell you what they're going to do, they do it. Of course, you try to speak with the director and say, "Is there any way you can bring this actor to do something different?" You try as much as you can, but then, you also have to be open to interpretation.

Death when to death a death by death hath given Then shall be op't the long shut gates of heaven. [Mors, mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset (dedisses).]

One of the most radical things women can do is to love their body.

A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?

Be extra careful in the work environment with those who like to maintain their position through charm and being political, rather than getting things done. They are very prone to envying and hating those who work hard and get results. They will slander and sabotage you without any warning.

When you write a script, you hope that people will give it life beyond the script.

A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.

Nelson McCormack on 'Killing Kennedy' was really terrific because I wrote the script, and he had some terrific ideas. We went over the script together, and I was with him on set. So it was a collaborative effort.

I'm not posh at all. I grew up in Sheffield but never managed to pick up the accent - which was careless because there'd be some cache now in being a northern playwright, but I missed out on that one.

I'm very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren't talking on stage. I'm interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down.

There are 43,000 minutes in a month - can't you give me five?

Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.

When I was in high school, I was going to be a painter because I had a facility for painting. I could do it, but I didn't have anything to say in that medium.

I wanted to keep the complexity of the female experience in the film as much as it is in the book, and the subject of not wanting a child is a very interesting subject, one that's not dealt with very much actually.However that complexity was not serving the story of what became the film [The Girl on the Train].

The dog barking at you from behind his master's fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built.

I expect we will become more demanding as citizens.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

I go to the theater because I need help dealing with my life; I want to see the greatest questions addressed. I need to see actors grappling with things that matter.

I wrote 'Buried Child' in a trailer at an old ranch house we had in California.

I didn't go into 'Rabbit Hole' wanting to write about class. I think because of who I am it somehow found its way into it.

I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not, however, value them.

Regardless of what barriers confront you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to want to.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

We always say about Hollywood that it's a company town and it's sort of is. It's like in Washington, they say, you know, the company is the government.

The happiest miser on earth is the man who saves up every friend he can make.

I'm interested in internationalism. It's the new multiculturalism. How we deal with each other isn't sufficient any more. It's about time we examine how we interact with the rest of the world we live in.

Truthfully, and I don't mean to sound naive, but I don't know that much about the film business.

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.

If you can't get your core audience to watch the show, it's very hard to then pull in enough people outside of your fan base to your network. The networks are just so branded now; USA can't really do a dark despairing drama and FX can't do a blue-sky show. People watch the networks they watch.

Change is tough, people don't like it, but it is necessary. Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

A fascinating breed, Old Etonians. Impeccable in their social skills and very portable - you can put them anywhere, and they are absolutely charming.

Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.

AIDS is a plague - numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health - though no one in authority has the guts to call it one.

I grew up in a family where the love of stories is very strong. And there's also a love of performance. I think one reason stories were so important in my family was that we moved around a lot.

There is nothing wherein their womanliness is more honestly garnished than with silence.

There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.

There's no question that the gay movement would not be as far along as it is without AIDS. But how can there be any other issue in the face of death, possible extinction?

I grew up in a village of about 800 people surrounded by lakes and woods, and I think it's made a definite impact on me.

So far as I know, anything worth hearing is not usually uttered at seven o'clock in the morning; and if it is, it will generally be repeated at a more reasonable hour for a larger and more wakeful audience.

We are all of us invented. We are all of us cobbled together from cartilage and dust. Few of us know with certainty the name of our maker. But I do... Bram Stoker.

But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews.

You do think, if you have your druthers, 'I want to sort of be, not anonymous, but unknown'. But you don't have your druthers in life, do you?

Eve and the apple was the first great step in experimental science.

A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. I reckon, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, it because most nights I went to bed and slept when I should have sat up and worried.

Don't let others put thoughts into your mind that takes away your self-confidence.

I like to get produced. I'm not saying I write to be commercial, I mean "Hazelwood High" they light a girl on fire, so it wasn't the most.

Male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.

Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.

No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment.

I'm queer - and queer, to me, is not being stuck in a binary and being kind of fluid.

Is it every man and woman's curse to want it all and only get ten percent of it? Or do we ask too much?