Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The way plays happen, at least with me, it's spontaneous combustion of things you've had in your head.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
Think what cowards men would be if they had to bear children. Women are altogether a superior species.
Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.
Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.
I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.
Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
To me, 'Show Boat' was the first American musical, the first to have the real texture of this country.
In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices
Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
I have seen dozens upon dozens of productions of 'Lebensraum' in dozens of languages around the globe.
...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.
Looking back, I spent a lot of time sitting in pubs when I should have been perfecting my playwriting.
Ultimately, we're incredibly resilient creatures. People really do get on with the business of living.
The smallest errors are always the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures.]
I don’t like writing for comedians. I like writing for actors. The best comedians are the best actors.
We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?
The man who tells lies hides the truth, but the man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.
In many of my plays, there was a kind of autobiographical character in the form of a son or young man.
You sometimes use the excuse, 'I'm a writer, dammit, I can do anything I want,' but that doesn't work.
To give birth is a fearsome thing; there is no hating the child one has borne even when injured by it.
Every play I write is about love and distance. And time. And from that we can get things like history.
Today, you're halfway to 100! Here's to optimism, whether it is realistic or not. Happy 50th birthday!
When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.
America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.
Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.
The tools I handle are words. They may be unappreciated or misunderstood, but they tell us who we are.
The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.
The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.
Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.
Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
It's all right to tell a wife the brutal truth, but you've got to go sort of easy with your lady-love.
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.
It is nasty when you're playing in someone else's house to point out that they don't have enough balls.
Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.
For the first five years of my life, things felt pretty good. A lot went wrong after that, family-wise.
As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.
Surely our job while we're here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.