A Quote by Stephen Karam
Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.
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Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.
There are 100,000 actors in the Screen Actors Guild. Only 2,000 of them make more than $75,000 a year.
Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than 18 years of dealing with him across a desk.
Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than nineteen years of dealing with him across the desk.
People talk about overnight successes, and ultimately, there's a certain amount of, you want to call it luck or fortune or good fortune, or whatever, but when your moment arrives, you have to have been at a point where you paid your dues, or done your 10,000 hours or have the requisite talent or whatever.
Do not allow your thoughts to become greater than you. No matter what your thoughts tell you, don't listen. Remember your thoughts are not your friend. Your thoughts try to confound you, confuse you. And they will tell you all kinds of things. Do not listen to your thoughts, even your good thoughts. Transcend everything, go beyond your thoughts to your bliss, to your joy and to your happiness.
Your chemistry with your co-actors is more important in a comedy. You can't leave it to your performance alone. So many things have to fall into place to make people laugh.
For a while I used to listen to those whispers about babies costing you books, and Cyril Connolly's loathsome quote that "There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." But it's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. A huge amount of your work is done when you're not at your desk. Knotty problems that you need your unconscious to solve. So it can be helpful to walk away and focus on other things and it can be helpful to be a bit harassed in your daily life, to be hungry for time to write.
The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day.
When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.
Try to keep your mouth shut until you have a job offer, especially if your move is not entirely certain. There are only a few cases in which I think it would be appropriate to tell your boss what's going on. For example, if your spouse is being forced to relocate, obviously you are going to go, and if you have a good relationship with your boss, then it might take some stress off of you to tell the truth. The general rule, though, is not to give your employer more power over your destiny than you have yourself.
Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth.
Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. What! Than ten hours over your books on your knees?
With tireless hours at your desk or traveling on a plane, it's important that you take time to stay connected to your body.
You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Get up from your desk and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed at desk level.
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