Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A lot of times, I think people feel that new plays are suspect, and actually, I don't know where that came from. I completely disagree with it!
Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.
We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.
It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society.
In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.
If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
I figure I've done what I could do, more or less, and now I'm going back to being a chemical; all we are is a lot of talking nitrogen, you know.
If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.
I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.
When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don't put down a word until the play seems ready to be written.
It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.
What I have found is that even when you try to transform existing structures they are so powerful they often overwhelm, seduce, and control you.
Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion.
Clinton's hands remain incredibly clean, don't they, and Tony Blair's smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt.
Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.
There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.
I don't believe in sampling some Tibetan music just to make it sound groovy, but you do your homework, you understand what you're doing with it.
And even in the hatred of the majority, there's a kind of triumph because I know that, although they'd never admit it, they secretly respect me.
Do you see what I mean?! About the theater?! I'm back here for three hours and I'm acting like a lunatic. I'll be in analysis till I'm a hundred
I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to.
I have a heart to love all the world; and like Alexander I wish there were yet other worlds, so I could carry even further my amorous conquests.
Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.
There was nothing to aspire to, no one to honor. Sojourner Truth wasn't a big enough role model for me. I couldn't go around abolishing slavery.
It is good to love in a moderate degree; to distraction, it is not good; but to love to entire distraction, is the thing that my master's doing.
Not to be born surpasses all reckoning. The next best thing by far, when one has been born is to go back as swiftly as possible whence one came.
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are... ...We must always take risks. That is our destiny.
It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.
The life of man is like a game with dice; if you don't get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you get.
Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
I would join Sisyphus in Hades and gladly push my boulder up the slope if only, each time it rolled back down, I were given a line of Aeschylus.
Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex.
Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
Honor is a public enemy, and conscience a domestic, and he that would secure his pleasure, must pay a tribute to one and go halves with t'other.
If the world is in complete flux for me and life is falling apart, if I just manage to get myself in front of a computer or at my desk, it calms.
We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!
Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.
A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.
Learning to write for the theatre is learning to be a human being, because the theatre by its very nature makes you deal with other human beings.
I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.
What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing, the ugly, and the disgusting; the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember.
I'm feeling a kind of liberty to write about what's interesting to me without worrying about what I should be writing about. And that feels good.