Playwright Quotes - Page 5

• It's very hard to be a playwright because it's very competitive.

  Jesse Eisenberg

  Hard

  4 Copy quote

• David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.

  Tom Hardy

  Hate, Mean, Directors

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• One is just an interpreter of what the playwright thinks, and therefore the greater the playwright, the more satisfying it is to act in the plays.

  Vivien Leigh

  Thinking, Play, Greater

  9 Copy quote

• I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

  Laura Linney

  Father, Actresses, Manhattan

  7 Copy quote

• I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces for fanzines, and I've written for Hollywood.

  George R. R. Martin

  School, Careers, Hollywood

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Love, Life, Heartbreak

  "A Writer's Notebook" by W. Somerset Maugham, Country Life Press, (p. 13), 1949.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

  Liev Schreiber

  Teacher, Lucky, Actors

  19 Copy quote

• If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.

  Brenda Ueland

  Mother, Children, Doors

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.

  Eric Bentley

  Play, Two, Theatre

  Eric Bentley (1953). “In search of theater”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always felt it a great privilege to be in the theater, and I am grateful to all the playwrights who have given me so many wonderful roles. It's a terrifying business, but it has its compensations. Where else could I have found someone who for 50 years has given me sheer enchantment?

  Alfred Lunt

  Grateful, Found Someone, Years

  6 Copy quote

• Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society. The greatest playwrights are moralists.

  Yasmina Reza

  Reflection, Mirrors, Theatre

  "Yasmina Reza: 'There's no point in writing theatre if it's not accessible'". Interview with Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2012.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

  Alex Cox

  Squares, Littles, Language

  8 Copy quote

• Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.

  Epictetus

  Business, Character, Men

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.502, Lulu.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

  Arthur Miller

  Business, Drama, Passion

  Arthur Miller (2009). “Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge”, p.53, A&C Black

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

  Mark Helprin

  Children, Growing Up, Odds

  7 Copy quote

• Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

  Howard Zinn

  Mean, Artist, Justice

  Howard Zinn (2012). “The Historic Unfulfilled Promise”, p.65, City Lights Publishers

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.

  Patti Smith

  Art, Children, Guitar

  "Just Kids". Book by Patti Smith, www.cbc.ca. January 4, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't want to be a playwright, I want to be a rock and roll star.

  Sam Shepard

  Stars, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  Sam Shepard (1997). “Plays”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do come from a theater background, where the playwright is optimal and king and you have to serve the playwright. So I am, of course, a huge fan of scripted everything.

  Skylar Astin

  Kings, Fans, Theater

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

  Akira Kurosawa

  Believe, Mean, Eye

  11 Copy quote

• Some playwrights are obvious influences on younger writers. Arthur Miller (realistic, politically engaged dramas) and Christopher Durang (satirical dark comedies) are examples. But August stands apart, ... He has his special way of seeing things. I remember he and I were at one of those fancy benefits the Rep has. The gay men's chorus was singing, and I was very proud to have brought them into a Rep event. And August says, 'You know, I don't see any black people up there.' That was his focus the lives of black people.

  Daniel J. Sullivan

  Drama, Gay, Dark

  4 Copy quote

• Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.

  Meredith Willson

  Writing, Play, Theatre

  4 Copy quote

• Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.

  Janet Malcolm

  Heart, Giving, Novelists

  Janet Malcolm (2013). “The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes”, p.70, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I decided honestly that comic art is an art form in itself. It reflects the life and times more accurately and actually is more artistic than magazine illustration - since it is entirely creative. An illustrator works with camera and models; a comic artist begins with a white sheet of paper and dreams up his own business - he is playwright, director, editor and artist at once.

  Alex Raymond

  Dream, Art, Illustration

  Alex Raymond (1990). “Flash Gordon: Mongo, the planet of doom”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source