Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.
As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.
I think the aloe is one of South Africa's most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out there in the wild when everything else is dried.
My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.
This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.
Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'
I think they should create a holiday for friends-with-benefits relationships. Because I feel like Valentine's Day is, maybe it's a day to stay home and cry.
That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.
You're only a beginner; and what you think is love, and interest, and all that, is not real love at all: three quarters of it is only unsatisfied curiosity.
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.
Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.
In a scene [where the improvisers must interact] without the letter S, the audience is waiting for you to lose - so they can laugh at you. Don't try to win.
Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so - doubly dynamic - to be young, gifted and black.
I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.
In order to prove a friend to one's guests, frugality must reign in one's meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.
From that time through the time I was a New Dramatist, when I was something like twenty-two, I saw absolutely everything in New York. Absolutely everything.
It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one.
She's talking about herself in the third person because the idea of being who she is, of acknowledging that she is herself, is more than her pride can take.
Whoe'er imagines prudence all his own, Or deems that he hath powers to speak and judge Such as none other hath, when they are known, They are found shallow.
Most of the people of this world are coated round and round with self-esteem, and they're afraid to admit any understanding of the things which aren't good.
The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.
I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of human nature that hardly lend themselves to that process.
The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.
Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
What's great about the way 'Shame''s been received is that I kept on thinking there's no way this film will be received well since I've had such a good time.
The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.
Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives.
I think the only difference between me and other people is that when I hear of an interesting historical incident, I immediately write it down and Google it.
I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.
Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.
Though the Life Force supplies us with its own purpose, it has no other brains to work with than those it has painfully and imperfectly evolved in our heads.
I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results.
At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.
One would hope, as well that intimacy would leave more of a mark, that more of it would remain. But it doesn’t. You just end up thinking, who is this person?
My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.
Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.
If you believe you're good already, you don't need to do extra stuff to impress us. Your best work comes when you're absorbed; because then your ego is away.
In life most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. Bad improvisers block action often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
Where if you're in a universe where you have to accept ideas, you'll never know if your partner wanted the garbage you're handing them. They have to take it.
The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.
Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other.
Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.
Women are using makeup to make their eyes look puffy, their noses look red, and instead of going to the gym, they start their day with a brisk walk of shame.
In all cases of slander currency, whenever the forger of the lie is not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers.
I used to paint and I used to draw, and I probably would have loved to have been a portrait painter if I'd been good enough, but I really wasn't good enough.