Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?
The play is a very simple idea really; someone needs some support and consolation, and she finds a place where she gets it.
I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.
I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.
There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains.
I have found, after a good deal of consideration, that the best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for Him here.
No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.
Not everybody is strong enough to endure life without an anesthetic. Drink probably averts more gross crime than it causes.
You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.
The best bought-up children are those who have seen thier parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the first duty of a parent.
I absolutely love working on musicals, but anytime I finish a project, I want to move on to something completely different.
I would never use obscene language in the office. Certainly not. I kept my obscene language for the home, where it belongs.
My agent in London says all New York films are wonderful if they're really New York films because they're like travelogues.
And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.
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.
Of the things which nourish the imagination, humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it.
I started writing because I got so frustrated that there weren't enough plays that had roles for young black women in them.
I'm not against work, I think work is great, I work a lot; but if you want to play, the consequences must not be important.
As of today, if I am asked abroad if I am a free citizen of the United States of America, I must only say what is true: No.
I would like there to be gender equity. I would like the Broadway season to reflect sort of the demographic of the country.
I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color.
Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
No matter how great the script, the actual film will only be a distant relative of it - it will never be an identical twin.
If the thought is slow to come, a glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does come, a glass of good wine rewards it.
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
Before a cat will condescend to treat you as a trusted friend, some little token of esteem is needed, like a dish of cream.
Here between the hither and the farther shore While time is withdrawn, consider the future And the past with an equal mind.
Maybe Napoleon was wrong when he said we were a nation of shopkeepers... Today England looked like a nation of goalkeepers.
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.
The idea that anybody might be allowed to use their common sense when clearly no harm is being done is part of history now.
People shouldn't trust artists and they shouldn't trust art. Part of the fun of art is that it invites you to interpret it.
You don't work as hard to watch a movie. You work harder to watch a play, so what the audience puts into it is interesting.
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum, you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself.
There is an invisible aspect of being a writer; none of it is about you. It's about your work, and that's what it should be.
Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.
[Y]ou [man] are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with [woman=] me, when for your faithful ally you might win me easily.
It's been unsettling to discover that every form of narrative, even one that purports to tell the truth, is a kind of lying.
Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.
For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.
The mechanism of violence is what destroys women, controls women, diminishes women and keeps women in their so-called place.
I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time.
Oh,Sara. It is like a story." "It is a story...everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.
After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.
You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.