Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I really am guilty, of many somethings, all of them lethal and very enjoyable and technically not quite legal.
I do as much as I can. I even drive through the chase scenes several times to make sure the details are right.
I'm an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.
I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.
I don't mind about the dead ones. They're dead. The worst of it is, they cling to the living and won't let go.
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love.
People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.
When 'night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway.
I've learned not to be such a show-off and to have a bit more empathy with humanity. Or at least to fake that.
Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?.
I have never for one instant seen clearly within myself. How then would you have me judge the deeds of others?
The difference between an author and a horse is that the horse doesn't understand the horse dealer's language.
When you say a friend has a sense of humor do you mean that he makes you laugh, or that he can make you laugh?
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense.
A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy.
How was your flight? Well, aeronautically it was a great success. Socially, it left quite a bit to be desired.
The Stately Homes of England, How beautiful they stand, To prove the Upper Classes, Have still the Upper Hand.
Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.
Nothing keeps me in such awe as perfect beauty; now, there is something consoling and encouraging in ugliness.
And who are the greater criminals-those who sell the instruments of death, or those who buy them and use them?
The most transgressive, the most taboo, the darkest act that could happen is a parent killing their own child.
You know, most good playwrights write seven good plays and then something happens and after that they're crap.
Oh child, may you be happier than your father, but in all other respects alike. And then you would not be bad.
Better to die, and sleep The never-waking sleep, than linger on And dare to live when the soul's life is gone.
It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.
I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.
Why is being a female having an agenda any more than being a misogynist - which David Mamet most certainly is?
New York was the Promised Land growing up. Writers were gods! The great gods of American culture... I thought.
A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life question your sitution at every turn.
You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.
The text loses its virginity simply by being staged: it's no longer the abstract ideal version; it's an event.
I'm not an experimental artist. I have no talent for that. I need a certain kind of antecedent form to follow.
If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.
I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.
Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.
As you write plays, you discover what you believe. And until you know what you believe, you can't write a play.
With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn't thinking, 'Oh, God, two more hours of this.
The job of the artist, is to say, wait a second, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's re-examine it.
Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.
The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
The only point of having power it seems to me is to empower others. The only point of leadership is to inspire.