Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You can't be a sort of pioneer.
The Atlantic Ocean was something then.
1975 is as much a historical document as 1803.
I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg.
We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.
The only riots were the people trying to get tickets.
The rich live hand-to-mouth too-just on a higher level.
Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.
Oh, I never use a seat belt. I don't believe in gravity.
Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.
The power of the past to still dominate our thinking today.
All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.
I'm an American playwright. Tennessee Williams got in all our DNA.
I wanted to be a Bride of Christ but I guess now I'm a young divorcee.
I'm sure there are some good dramaturgs but I've never worked with one.
It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.
I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.
Like a dog, a playwright lives in an eternal present and a play is never closed.
However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.
Eugene O'Neil created an American theater, and Tennessee Williams taught it how to sing.
There's no such thing as a perfect play. Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play.
And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.
We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?
Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York.
Every play is so important. It's a record of what life was like at the time you wrote that play or that book.
You can't kind of take away, you either do or you don't. If you kind of take away something you're a failure.
How much of your life can you account for? My life is a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes; I am all random”.
I don't think about taking a risk. I think about how far can I go. How can I make myself. What are the risks I must create.
I like to ground plays in reality so they can jump higher. So we can account for the trampoline, so we can account for the leap.
You can read ten books and finally come across one detail, and it's like, "now everything else makes sense. Now I know where I am."
There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.
Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as I don't see Character B. Knock Knock. Enter Character B.
James Joyce wrote the definitive work about Dublin while he was living in Switzerland. We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.
People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.
You cannot write to resonate twenty or thirty or forty years from now. You only can write for that very day, but whatever happens is all gravy.
You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.
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.
The great risk is always saying, "how will I communicate what I'm trying to get across to a room full of strangers sitting in the dark watching a stage?"
Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.
I mean New York City is the financial capital of the world. It's where all the money passes through, the Dow Jones, whatever, that's where all the money goes.
And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.
The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.
I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.
People rewrite the play so much to make it palatable to the audience, to make something clear, that they just deaden it. Like it was left it in the oven too long.
I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.
What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do
What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do.
Oh god, I'd just hate it if a certain dramaturg got a hold of a Pinter play, for example, which are all mystery and all music. That's how the life get's sucked out of plays.
Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play. It seems like spelling out mysterious, musical details can destroy a play by making the motivations too clear, too simplex.
I only do business with the people I do business with. The people I do business with find out I do business with the people I don't do business with.... I can't do business with you.