Top 944 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Playwrights - Page 16

I always was missing that female brown queer perspective, and I think in 'Vida' we have that. A lot of things I wanted to touch on and deal with, I get to do here.

You just have to re-wire your brain when you're shifting from the stage to the screen or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.

A writer has an inescapable voice. I think it's inherent in the nature, and I think that we don't control it anymore than we control what we want to write about.

Just say the lines and don't trip over the furniture.

Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after they're dead.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.

All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.

In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.

Cleanse my heart... Give me the ability to rage correctly

Most convicted felons are just people who were not taken to museums or Broadway musicals as children.

We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them.

I've lived my entire life in New York, and it informs everything.

In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.

You must spend money to make money.

I think they should create a holiday for friends-with-benefits relationships. Because I feel like Valentine's Day is, maybe it's a day to stay home and cry.

A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.

Making movies is a lot like being a construction worker. There are long intense stretches of work followed by nothing. It's not easy to find work, and in between, you have to figure out what to do for money.

Closing Bell is unlike any play I've written.

I've always been a little scared of technology, which is why I explore it.

The lower one speaks the closer a woman listens.

The more I do in my life, the more I can write music about new experiences.

In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.

Most of the Michelle Bachmanns and Mitt Romneys who say such terrible things about us actually is a positive force, because it allows sensible people to realize how stupid and vile their beliefs are.

The blush is beautiful, but it is sometimes convenient.

I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.

Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

I have 16 plays, and we don't ever do subtitles. You can't do subtitles in the theater, so I was like, 'I'm not gonna do subtitles.' You'll never lose the story. There might be a little joke that you might miss, but you'll never miss the story, even in the Spanglish of it.

I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today.

Kiss till the cow comes home.

When I hear the word culture - I release the safety-catch of my Browning.

'Yellow Face' marks my summation of multiculturalism.

I was telling stories before I could write. I like to tell stories, and I like to talk to things. If you]ve read fairy tales, you know that everything can talk,from trees to chairs to tables to brooms. So I grew up thinking that, and I turned it into stories.

When I'm not doing something that comes deeply from me, I get bored. When I get bored I get distracted and when I get distracted, I become depressed. It's a natural resistance, and it insures your integrity.

I wrote my first play because I wanted to try directing something, and I couldn't afford the rights - it was an adaptation of a book called 'The Wave' by Morton Rhue.

The smell of rain is rich with life.

It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time.

I had a dream, in 1985, I believe, when a friend I'd gone to school with was sick - one of the first people I knew who'd gotten the AIDS virus. I had a dream of him in his bedroom with an angel crashing through the ceiling. I wrote a poem called 'Angels in America.' I've never looked at the poem since the day I wrote it.

I really wanted Rachel [from the Girl on The Train] to be purely fixated on fantasy and on her ex-husband.I didn't want her to be embarking on romance, touching people; I wanted her purely in the realm of fantasy and frustration and dreaming and sadness.

To be able to write a play a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gullible, passionate; he must be something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a damn fool.

The humble and meek are thirsting for blood.

We runners talk about having fun but I don't think anybody believes us. We talk about discipline and endurance, we take care, we exercise caution, we watch our diets and monitor our pace. We are ascetics who talk, unconvincingly, of the bracing enjoyment of self-abuse.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination.

I don't think theatre has changed; it's society that has changed.