Top 944 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Playwrights - Page 5

The stressful time is the blank page at the beginning. When you're starting to see things being made flesh, and you're able to respond to that flesh, that's really exciting.

I feel like I've always been a weirdo. I always grew up with the sense of being a total outsider. I grew up so alienated from other people, and it never went away. When I'm around "normal" people I behave around them as if they are crazy, which makes me seem crazy.

I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it.

When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.

I remember how I would wait for a play idea. I wasted a tremendous amount of time. I didn't realize that ideas could be made into movies or novels.

Who cares about great marks left behind? We have one life... just one. Our life. We have nothing else.

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

The day, water, sun, moon, night - I do not have to purchase these things with money.

If I'm writing something and I'm not feeling mischievous, then I know it's not going to be great.

I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.

Writing is my primary way of expressing myself.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time.

I have a tremendous respect for writers who scribble away their torments, and their passions into plays.

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.

I'm too amused by the way people carry on to give in to despair.

With me, writing is 60% imagination, 30% people you know and 10% you don't know where it comes from.

My plays are ultimately about love, honor, duty, betrayal.

A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden.

Nothing is impossible to the willing heart.

The target market is for people who have not been entrenched in Web culture.

This is Buffalo, New York. It's like. Scranton without the charm.

There are still a lot of cases in the world where you order something and then you see 'Delivery will be in 8-12 weeks.' This is because of the faxes and forms that still exist.

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

Olivier said that drama is an affair of the heart, or it's nothing, and he was right.

Many dotcoms recruited people from existing companies who were quite experienced in finance, marketing, distribution and other disciplines but not necessarily experienced in the Web culture.

Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.

After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?

Women have the right to mount the scaffold; they should likewise have the right to mount the rostrum.

It never became an act in the sense of an act. It was always, no matter where we worked, little revues.

A noble birth and fortune, though they make not a bad man good, yet they are a real advantage to a worthy one and place his virtues in a fairer light.

You can have too much champagne to drink but you can never have enough.

Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.

You can't. Do you hear me? You think you've figured something out? You run over here so pleased with yourself because you changed your mind. Now you're certain. You're so... sloppy. You don't know anything. The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you decided with your buddies, it's just evidence. It doesn't finish the job. It doesn't prove anything.

Uneasy lies the head that craves the crown.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

I am now gay 'cause I have watched Ronaldo...

I felt no need to write a German-bashing play.

Sometimes it's a struggle to get over self-love first. Sometimes in this struggle for love, we give up, or lose everything, and we still don't achieve love. Some people don't even recognize real love when it comes without being called or sought.

The best part of one's life is the working part, the creative part. Believe me, I love to succeed... However, the real spiritual and emotional excitement is in the doing.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong - or you are absolutely right.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.

Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read.

Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.

I grew up in Wakefield, Mass., and there were only a couple of Jewish families in the town.

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn't permanent.

……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there.

I believe very deeply in the human spirit, and I have a sense of awe about it. I look around and ask, 'What makes the difference? What is it?' I've known people the world has thrown everything at - to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and they don't ask quarters.

To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief.

The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.

The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.

Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.