Tony Kushner Quotes - Page 3

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• Theater really gets damaged when there is a paucity of good criticism around.

  Tony Kushner

  Criticism, Theater

  "Tony Kushner: Strong plays, strong opinions". Interview With John Moore, www.denverpost.com. January 28, 2010.

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• When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn't doing overtly political work. I've since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.

  Tony Kushner

  Political, Historical, Needs

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

  Tony Kushner

  Drama, Historical, Details

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• There are two strains, I think, in American playwriting, of importance. One is traditional narrative realism, which is definitely my strain, and then the other great contribution is American musical theater, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

  Tony Kushner

  Thinking, Two, Musical

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Part of what makes for good writing is an ear for what we would call the poetical. Poetry itself is another thing and it seems to me to be the most difficult writing - that those people are the best writers and they lead the way for everyone else and their writing is frighteningly great.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, People, Ears

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I have kind of an almost religious feeling about poets. I usually refuse to meet them because I admire them so much. Except for Poe.

  Tony Kushner

  Religious, Feelings, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In the modern era, it isn't enough to write, you must also be the Writer, with a capital 'W,' and play your part as the protagonist in the cautionary narrative in which you will fail or triumph, be in or out, hot or cold, ride the wheel of fortune.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Play, Triumph

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The dreams of the left are always beautiful - the imagining of a better world, the damnation of the present one. This faith, this luminescent anger - these are worthy of being called human. These are the Beautiful that an age produces.

  Tony Kushner

  Beautiful, Dream, Age

  Tony Kushner (1994). “A Bright Room Called Day”, p.106, Theatre Communications Group

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• I'm not an experimental artist. I have no talent for that. I need a certain kind of antecedent form to follow.

  Tony Kushner

  Artist, Needs, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.

  Tony Kushner

  Morning, Writing, America

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics.

  Tony Kushner

  Spiritual, Angel, Past

  Angels in America: Millennium Approaches act 3, sc. 2 (1992)

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• Film is like tech starts on the first day of filming and it never stops. There's never a moment when the audience comes in, you're just in tech forever, and I can't stand being on a film set. It's really tedious.

  Tony Kushner

  Forever, Firsts, Film

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If you have value as an artist it's probably going to be in your capacity to let things inside you get past things that are placed there to keep you from telling the truth. The more you see things as clearly and coldly as you can, the more value you're going to have.

  Tony Kushner

  Artist, Past, Telling The Truth

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• Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.

  Tony Kushner

  Numbers, People, Theatre

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• So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.

  Tony Kushner

  Thinking, Obvious Things, Forever

  Interview, blogs.denverpost.com. January 31, 2010.

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• You learn that existence is legible but that you have to have a critical mind if you're going to read it.

  Tony Kushner

  Mind, Existence, Critical

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• I'm not religious, but I like God and he likes me.

  Tony Kushner

  Religious, Likes

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• I don't write political plays in the sense that I'm writing essays that are kind of disguised as plays. I would really defy anyone to watch any of my plays and say 'Well, here's the point.'

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Play, Political

  "Pulitzer-winning playwright talks gay marriage, Obama, new play". Interview With Chris Welch, www.cnn.com. June 15, 2009.

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• I don't know anything about making movies. I'd never been on a film set. I'm really kind of an idiot when it comes to figuring out where objects are in space. If they're both moving, I can't do the math. If you ever see me driving down a road, go somewhere else quickly.

  Tony Kushner

  Moving, Math, Somewhere Else

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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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• The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.

  Tony Kushner

  Running, People, Essentials

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• If you [c]annot find your [h]eart's desire in your own backyard, you never lost it to begin with

  Tony Kushner

  Desire, Backyards, Lost

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• When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Play, People

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• I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die

  Tony Kushner

  Heart, Angels In America, Break

  Tony Kushner (2013). “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition”, p.144, Theatre Communications Group

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• If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.

  Tony Kushner

  Lying, Thinking, Choices

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