Christopher Durang Quotes

• Laughter can bring a new perspective.

  Christopher Durang

  Happiness, Laughter, Perspective

  "Family Survival". Interview with Arthur Holmberg, americanrepertorytheater.org.

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• Here is the key to existence. Are you listening? Here is the key to existence; when I tell you this you will know how to run your lives. You will know if you have been living life to the full, and if you realize you haven't been, you will know immediately how to correct that state of affairs. As soon as I tell you the key to existence. Are you ready? Are you ready for me to tell you?... Always breathe. That's the basis of life, breathing. That's basically the basis. If you don't breathe, you die.

  Christopher Durang

  Running, Live Life, Keys

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• I write intuitively, and with most of my plays, I don't know what is always going to happen. This means I can sometimes go off on a wrong tangent, and with luck then rewrite it in a better direction. But it means I sometimes surprise myself as I'm going along.

  Christopher Durang

  Writing, Mean, Play

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• So many American plays are about family. When you're in the first part of your life, you write about family a lot. I find with my absurdist plays that I was actually writing about my family, but so disguised I didn't realize it myself.

  Christopher Durang

  Writing, Play, Firsts

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• Unless you go through all the genuine angers you feel, both justified and unjustified, the feelings of love that you have will not have any legitimate base and will be at least partially false. Plus, eventually you will go crazy.

  Christopher Durang

  Crazy, Feelings, Justified

  Christopher Durang (1987). “The Marriage of Bette and Boo”, p.93, Grove Press

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• On the one hand, I'm grateful to be hired and thrilled to be paid.

  Christopher Durang

  Grateful, Hands, Paid

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• I love actors. I enjoy their company, and I get excited each and every time they bring a character I've written to life. Every so often a talented actor doesn't hook in correctly to a character; or someone gets lost in a labyrinth of over-complicated thoughts, and the character and play suffer. However, most of the time I find actors either end up doing exactly what was in my head, or sometimes do something even better.

  Christopher Durang

  Character, Play, Suffering

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• My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it's possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually.

  Christopher Durang

  Letting Go, Emotion, Problem

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• It is a sin to follow your horoscope because only God knows the future and He won't tell us. Also, we can tell horoscopes are false because according to astrology, Christ would have been a Capricorn, and Capricorn people are cold, ambitious and attracted to Scorpio and Virgo, and we know that Christ was warm, loving, and not attracted to anybody.

  Christopher Durang

  Scorpios, Astrology, People

  Christopher Durang (1981). “Sister Mary Ignatius explains it all for you ; The actor's nightmare: two one-act plays”

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• As a citizen I felt appalled that we WENT TO WAR over faulty information - that felt false or at least "stretched" from the first time they started to push the idea that Iraq and 9/11 were connected, though they didn't seem to be and there was no logical reason for thinking they were. It's like your neighbors the Smiths burned your house down, and then the next day you retaliated by burning down the Jones' house.

  Christopher Durang

  War, Thinking, Ideas

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• I thought if I can do something more playful and light like my play BEYOND THERAPY, it might be a money maker. I think one of the reasons BEYOND THERAPY has legs - it's been very successful for me around the country - is because it's a friendly play, rather sunny.

  Christopher Durang

  Country, Successful, Thinking

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• The first several scenes are about sexual addiction. They're not specifically political at all... I didn't sit down and think, ''I am going to write something about the religious right.'' I started out by writing something about sexual addiction, and it evolved... I don't look at a calendar and say: ''Oh! There's going to be an election in 1996. I think now, in 1993, I'll start writing a play that'll be ready for it.''

  Christopher Durang

  Religious, Writing, Thinking

  "Of Plays About Politics And Politicians at Play". Interview with Wendy Wasserstein, www.nytimes.com. October 6, 1996.

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• Since I also act, sometimes I get over my resentment and commit to the pitch as an acting job.

  Christopher Durang

  Jobs, Acting, Resentment

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• It was before Vatican II and the liberalization of church doctrine. You weren't meant to eat meat on Friday in deference to Christ, who died on Friday. If you did, you went to hell, . . That way, Hitler would be in hell alongside someone who ate meat on Friday. I thought there was no justice there.

  Christopher Durang

  Friday, Justice, Church

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• In my 20s, I was more cynical/despairing (even though I still wrote comically), but I often sent audiences home with rather dark last moments. After a while though, I don't want to send the audience home bummed out, or distressed ... I want to see what's hopeful. I'm not overly cheery all the time, and yet I'm not suicidal either. I do think people can make choices that make their lives happier.

  Christopher Durang

  Home, Suicidal, Dark

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• I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic.

  Christopher Durang

  Atheist, Agnostic

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• When my parents separated, I was very grateful.

  Christopher Durang

  Grateful, Parent

  Interview with Arthur Holmberg, americanrepertorytheater.org.

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• My father knew the charming side of my mother, and my mother thought that he was attentive and pleasant and was an architect, which was a respectable profession, but I don't think that they actually got to know one another deeply.

  Christopher Durang

  Mother, Father, Thinking

  "Family Survival". Interview with Arthur Holmberg, americanrepertorytheater.org.

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• I need a life. I need a friend. I need a change. But nothing ever changes.

  Christopher Durang

  Needs, Need A Change, Friend In Need

  Christopher Durang (2013). “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”, p.25, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over? Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsetting novel in which the hero is the country, and the president is this disturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worse and worse and worse.

  Christopher Durang

  Country, Hero, Pigs

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• Then in college I became obsessed with film, and wanted to be part of that.

  Christopher Durang

  College, Obsession, Film

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• I didn't have a teacher like Sister Mary Ignatius.

  Christopher Durang

  Sister, Teacher, Mary

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• I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.

  Christopher Durang

  Theatre, Grew Up, Grew

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• My parents didn't really know one another.

  Christopher Durang

  Parent, Knows

  "Family Survival". Interview with Arthur Holmberg, americanrepertorytheater.org.

  4 Copy quote

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