David Ives Quotes

• Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?

  David Ives

  Jobs, Writing, Design

  46 Copy quote

• Plays are always about intense relationships, whether they're intense love relationships or family relationships or existential relationships.

  David Ives

  Play, Love Relationship, Existentialism

  17 Copy quote

• With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn't thinking, 'Oh, God, two more hours of this.

  David Ives

  Thinking, Light, Play

  10 Copy quote

• Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

  David Ives

  Writing, Play, Symphony

  10 Copy quote

• I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to tell a story in cinematic ways, but theater is a much more elusive craft.

  David Ives

  People, Theatre, Stories

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Ives

  Writing, Theatre, Deals

  6 Copy quote

• Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

  David Ives

  Lists, Sometimes, Democratic

  83 Copy quote

• I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.

  David Ives

  New York, Thinking, Should

  8 Copy quote

• I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.

  David Ives

  Song, Perfect, Three

  4 Copy quote

• All reviews should carry a Surgeon General's warning. The good ones turn your head, the bad ones break your heart.

  David Ives

  Heart, Warning, Crafts

  4 Copy quote

• Necessarily, I'm always involved in casting, as any playwright is, because the whole process of putting on a play is a collaborative, organic effort on the part of a bunch of people trying to think alike.

  David Ives

  Thinking, Play, People

  4 Copy quote

• I have been approached now and again about sitcoms, but, with very few exceptions, one simply needs to move to L.A. for at least a year or two these days if one wants to develop a series - which is what writing a pilot means. I've also been approached about writing episodes for sitcoms, but in order to do that one actually has to watch sitcoms. . . . Life's too short for television, and I don't what it on my actual gravestone, HE STARED AT A BOX FOR 10,000 HOURS.

  David Ives

  Moving, Writing, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.

  David Ives

  Writing, Giving, Interesting

  6 Copy quote

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