Top 944 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Playwrights - Page 4

When a belief becomes dominant in American psychological circles one can be sure of one thing: that belief refers to something that no longer exists.

There are times when one's life appears to be a stage. People come, people go. They come in order to go, and go with no intent of return. When they return, they return as one's past. A past that would make you feel that the present is false.

In a physical contest on the field of battle it is allowable to use tactics and strategy, to retreat as well as advance, to have recourse to a ruse as well as open attack; but in matters of principle there can be no tactics, there is one straight forward course to follow and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end.

Truth - there's no such thing.

There is nobility in the struggle, you don't have to win.

The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the unshakable sanity of the senses, spared my mind the burden of too much thinking, turned myself outward to experience the world and inward to savor the pleasures it has given me.

It is my hope that everyone's valiant efforts will have a ripple effect that will carry us forth into a fairer future. 'The arc of the moral universe is long,' said Martin Luther King Jr., 'but it bends toward justice.' And because I have been witness to so many people who lent their support to this good cause, I am lifted up by them -- lifted up so high that I can see the end of that arc.

People create social conditions and people can change them.

Plays can create empathy. If you put a Muslim character on stage, and make him a full character, you're making it possible for the audience to feel empathy, and a little empathy on both sides would help.

Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake - as almost all hats are.

I hate that word blog It sounds like a large accumulation of snot

Every day my love for you grows higher, deeper, wider, stronger... It grows and grows until it touches the tip of where you are and comes back to me in the loving memory of you, and my heart melts with that love and grows even more.

I have noted that persons with bad judgment are most insistent that we do what they think best.

The contented have time to worry about trivialities; often to the extent that they never achieve anything worthwhile.

You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

I think if I were a woman I'd wear coffee as a perfume.

Give a woman a job and she grows balls.

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.

In almost every musical ever written, there's a place that's usually about the third song of the evening - sometimes it's the second, sometimes it's the fourth, but it's quite early - and the leading lady usually sits down on something; sometimes it's a tree stump in Brigadoon, sometimes it's under the pillars of Covent Garden in My Fair Lady, or it's a trash can in Little Shop of Horrors... but the leading lady sits down on something and sings about what she wants in life. And the audience falls in love with her and then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night.

Fear - jealousy - money - revenge - and protecting someone you love.

Fine feathers, they say, make fine birds.

I like to flip through play scripts, not just my own; there is something exciting about seeing printed language on a page that triggers responses in me.

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

. . . don't rewrite unless you know what you're trying to do.

The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool.

When you do a film, when you do a television show, eventually someone comes along and will say to you, 'Don't say that because, one, you will offend someone, or, two, no one will get that. Someone's going to be confused by that, not get the reference and feel abandoned, and then they will get angry at the entertainment.'

We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.

A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence.

Being laughed at is excellent preparation for marriage.

I shall await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days.

With 'The Humans,' I've found that because it's related to very familiar forms - the family play and the thriller, almost a genre-collison play - some people want it to be one or the other. Either less dark and more of a family comedy or a full-fledged thriller with blood and ghosts jumping out of closets. Everyone's taste is different.

wait," I said. "so you're saying that you proposed to me because I'm a mess and I'm a person and because we need each other, while Rebecca was —— something else? I get it, I follow you, but I'm also thinking, is the bullshit getting a little deep in here?" "Yes, it is. You've caught me. And so fine, I will come clean, and I will tell you the absolutely true and naked reason why I want to marry you and only you, and not Rebecca." "Why?" "Because when I'm with you, I'm the pretty one.

I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.

There is absolutely no point in not being a populist. What I feel emboldened to do is to take something which is a minority interest and make it accessible without dumbing it down. I'm such an enthusiast for peculiar things, things that are perhaps a bit avant-garde, and try and involve everyone.

When gratitude o'erflows the swelling heart, and breathes in free and uncorrupted praise for benefits received, propitious heaven takes such acknowledgment as fragrant incense, and doubles all its blessings.

Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was the natural state that we existed in. For one thing, she suffered from a debilitating depression throughout my childhood, and depression is nothing if not static.

I want to stay close to the groove of people's individual human stories. I can't see that there's anything more interesting than that. That's just me. That's what I do.

This is the way I think about politics: We want two diametrically opposed things from a politician. On one hand we want them to be bastions of moral integrity, perfect people, saints. And on the other hand, we want them to be effective leaders.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

I so earnestly believe that prayer can be helpful and guide you and protect you and inspire you. I mean, I'm in awe.

What was once a cottage industry dedicated to the discovery and development of new voices and works has become instead the raison d'etre for many a playwright's existence . . .. And since readings have become playwrights' main source of exposure, the nature of playwriting has changed to fit readings' needs. Investigation into what is eminently theatrical has been substituted - more and more these days - by what can simply come across and read well.

One of the local reporters assured me Garrison would put in an appearance for the cross-examination, but as the courtroom settled down and the rear doors were closed, there was no sign of him.

But if I'm content with a little, Enough is as good as a feast.

I'll kind of get interested in a subject and I won't know why. It'll be in my head for many years and I'll say, 'Do I know enough here to research?'

The trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.

How do we refresh our language? Why do we still use, like, a 150-year-old classification system to talk about people? It's so weird! We still call people black and white?

Misery's fine - as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.

There's nothing like a deadline to get the old blood flowing. All the juices, really. It doesn't follow, if you think about it. You'd assume certain things ... certain activities ... would become unimportant. Certain betrayals would become unbearable. But they don't really. In fact, quite the opposite. Everything takes on a new light. The impossible becomes possible, desirable even. It's quite remarkable.

A trap screenwriters can fall into is making scripts that are good reads, which doesn't necessarily mean it will make a good film.

I definitely write from a need to try, in my own two hours, to right a wrong. My little play is inconsequential in terms of whether or not we have health care, but it may affect the way people who see the play think about the issue.

I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.

My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it's possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually.

Even thought this is a remarkable story [The danish Girl] and these are two fascinating people in their own right, Lili's story had been in the public domain but this had somehow slipped out of sight. It seemed bizarre then but I couldn't have imagined releasing the film in a climate like today around trans issues and the comfort people have about it in the public eye.

There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.

Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.

I shall not die young, for I am already near seventy: I may die old.

One of the most incredible and important things about the theater is that we're creating a safe space for all feelings, but especially, ugly feelings.

I'm half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home.

I did 'Doubt' as a film, a play and an opera.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.