Playwright Quotes - Page 6

• 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.

  Edward Albee

  Attention, Pay, Gains

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I had the training at drama school where I studied Shakespeare and Brecht and Chekov and all these period historical playwrights and I think that I responded to the material.

  Orlando Bloom

  Drama, School, Thinking

  Interview with Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. May 3, 2005.

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• An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.

  Alan Bennett

  Daily Mail, Should, Centre

  Alan Bennett (2007). “Writing Home”, p.160, Macmillan

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• You know, I used to not understand fashion, a lot of it, but I completely understood being a playwright or a screenwriter and suddenly having an actor say your words and making them come to life. That I can understand. Finally, I'm starting to understand this.

  Reese Witherspoon

  Fashion, Actors, Used

  Vogue magazine Interview, November 2008.

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• What does a painter do? You get a painting, you put some intent and passion and emotion into these things, and hope the people will receive it. Same as a playwright. It's art.

  Creed Bratton

  Art, Passion, People

  Source: www.talive.com

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• When Jennie, mother of Winston Churchill invited playwright George Bernard Shaw to lunch, he telegraphed: "Certainly not. What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well-known habits?" She replied, "Know nothing of your habits; hope they are better than your manners."

  Anne Sebba

  Mother, Lunch, Done

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• There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.

  John Guare

  Dna, Tennessee, Changed

  "John Guare: Strangers in the Dark". Interview with Tana Wojczuk, www.guernicamag.com. March 19, 2012.

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• When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Fall, Tears, Sixteen

  "Francis Ford Coppola: What I've Learned" by Stephen Garrett, www.esquire.com. July 7, 2009.

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• Tennessee Williams, one of my favorite playwrights, [lived] down there. You always heard about the Keys and how amazing they are and, well, it's like a highway with some bars on it.

  John Leguizamo

  Keys, Tennessee, Bars

  Interview with Haley Weiss, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 31, 2016.

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• Belonging to the Dramatists Guild Council where, with my fellow dramatists, I can directly affect (and protect) the professional lives of all American Playwrights has always made me feel that I am returning as much to the theatre as I withdraw. Because only playwrights can ensure the well-being of playwrights. No one else will do it for us.

  Peter Stone

  Theatre, Crafts, Made

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• My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape, yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It's quite embarrassing, it's quite unpleasant, it's quite awkward.

  Wallace Shawn

  People, Awkward, Style

  W. Davies King, Wallace Shawn (1997). “Writing Wrongs: The Work of Wallace Shawn”, p.23, Temple University Press

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• You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

  Tony Kushner

  Thinking, Giving, Guilty

  Interview with Andrea Bernstein, www.motherjones.com. July/August 1995.

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• I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

  Orson Scott Card

  Believe, Writing, Class

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• Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.

  Anton Chekhov

  Play, Theatre, Arms

  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1955). “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”

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• The British playwright Nina Raine is one of her generation's most promising talents.

  John Lahr

  Generations, Talent, British

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• There have always been dreamers. Men and women who catch a glimpse of something beyond themselves who dare to reach for goals and visions. .. Yet no earthly dreamer can match the greatest of them all, the Dreamer who died on the cross to make His dream a reality. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word." The literal meaning of logos, the original Greek term translated as "Word," is idea, thought or blueprint. It is an ancient Greek theatrical term describing the work of a playwright as he conceives, or dreams up, the plot of a play. So we could say, "In the beginning was the dream".

  Tommy Tenney

  Dream, Reality, Men

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• The person I would trust the most is my mom. She's just really creative... She's a playwright and she's a musician.

  Jazmine Sullivan

  Mom, Creative, Musician

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I think the only real referent for anybody writing drama is probably Hamlet. You have the most extreme tragic drama, this sort of blood-boltered thing, but it's also very funny, which is simply a matter of the playwright being alive and observant and entertaining, and understanding not only the world but what will play.

  William Monahan

  Real, Drama, Writing

  Source: collider.com

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• As a composer I could never find use for over 4 or 5 notes in any musical number, and as a playwright most of my plays have two acts because i couldn't think of an idea for the third act.

  George M. Cohan

  Thinking, Play, Ideas

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• The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.

  Goswami Kriyananda

  Mistake, Night, If There Is A God

  Source: www.lotusguide.com

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• I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.

  John Guare

  Believe, Thinking, Working Together

  "John Guare: Strangers in the Dark". Interview with Tana Wojczuk, www.guernicamag.com. March 19, 2012.

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• if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?

  Gertrude Atherton

  Artist, Together, World

  Gertrude Atherton (2012). “Black Oxen”, p.41, Broadview Press

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• I think of myself as a narrative artist. I don't think of myself as a novelist or screenwriter or playwright. All of those modalities of processing and experiencing narrative are obviously very different, and I'm not sure that I prefer any one to the other. I think the novel gives you the opportunity to have a kind of interiority that you can't have in the theater, which is pure exteriority.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Artist, Opportunity, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm happy that I feel a little less out of place in filmmaking than I once was - but it's almost impossible for a playwright in the U.S. to make a living. You can have a play, like I did with 'Angels,' and it still generates income for me, but it's not enough for me to live on and have health insurance.

  Tony Kushner

  Movie, Angel, Play

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• I know playwrights who like to kid themselves into saying that their characters are so well formed that they just take over. They determine the structure of the play. By which is meant, I suspect, only that the unconscious mind has done its work so thoroughly that the play just has to be filtered through the conscious mind. But there's work to be done - and discovery to be made.

  Edward Albee

  Character, Kids, Discovery

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.63, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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