Top 300 Playwright Quotes & Sayings

I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing - which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring.

We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage.

I never wanted to be a playwright.

One is just an interpreter of what the playwright thinks, and therefore the greater the playwright, the more satisfying it is to act in the plays.

You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by.

I am a playwright. I show What I have seen. In the man markets I have seen how men are traded. That I show, I, the playwright.

I'm one of those lazy actors; I like to take what the playwright wrote and work with that.

I think sometimes we do miss what a fabulous playwright Brian Friel is.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg.

It's a lucky circumstance when you get to usher in new work, because you are able to ask the playwright and the director (who in a new work is always in dialogue with the playwright) an unlimited amount of questions.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

The British playwright Nina Raine is one of her generation's most promising talents.

The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.

It's a lucky life to be a playwright.

My favorite playwright is probably Samuel Beckett, and he was always laughing at the abyss.

A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay.

One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations.

I think that as a playwright, if I detail that environment, then I'm taking away something from them [designers]. I'm taking away their creativity and their ability to have input themselves, not just to follow what the playwright has written. So I do a minimum set description and let the designers create within that.

I love Tennessee Williams; as a playwright, he's so poetic.

There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.

One of the things he liked about playwriting as to any other kind of writing is that a playwright is a w-r-i-g-h-t, not a w-r-i-t-e; in other words, that a playwright is more of a craftsman than an artist of the big novel.

I am not a playwright. A playwright would take "Antigone" and hit it a few clouts and knock it out of shape and restructure it. My versioning was strictly verbal.

Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.

Stage is the place of the playwright: you're guided by great actors and directors, but it's the playwright's word on the page that counts.

I was a theatre major and started off as a playwright.

I'm not a playwright.

A playwright, especially a playwright whose work deals very directly with an audience, perhaps he should pay some attention to the nature of the audience response - not necessarily to learn anything about his craft, but as often as not merely to find out about the temper of the time, what is being tolerated, what is being permitted.

My theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.

I am not, at heart, a playwright.

I'm not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.

I always have something big enough to say as a playwright. It's storytelling.

I'm an actor and a playwright, and I don't earn much.

It's an odd mix, the life of a playwright.

One of the best things that happened for me as a playwright is becoming a comic-book writer.

You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.

I'm a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.

My mother was an actress and a director, as well. And my father was a playwright and poet.

Shakespeare was very political, but he was also a fabulous entertainer. That's where his genius comes in as a playwright.

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

Like a dog, a playwright lives in an eternal present and a play is never closed.

I do come from a theater background, where the playwright is optimal and king and you have to serve the playwright. So I am, of course, a huge fan of scripted everything.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.

Playwrights are naturally wary and protective - God, who's more protective than a playwright? You read a play, the playwright wants to hear from you immediately.

I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world.

I'm an American playwright. Tennessee Williams got in all our DNA.

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.

A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

I pray to be of service to the playwright, the audience, the other actors and my character.

A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater.

To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright.

If you are in an Edward Albee play, you say Edward Albee is the greatest playwright of all time... If you're in an Israel Horovitz play, you say Israel Horovitz is the greatest playwright of all time.

I am an internationally produced playwright.

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.