David Ives Quotes

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

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

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.

He might have thought white people was coyotes, but he still shared food with me. Long as people do that, I guess it don't matter what they think of you.

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.

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

Vanda (as Dunayev): I am a pagan. I am a Greek. I love the ancients not for their pediments or their poetry, but becausein their world Venus could love Paris one day and Anchises the next. Because they're not the moderns, who live in their mind, and because they're the opposite of Christians, who live on a cross. I don't live in my mind, or on a cross. I live on this divan. In this dress. In these stockings and these shoes. I want to live the way Helen and Aspasia lived, not the twisted women of today, who are never happy and never give happiness. Who won't admit that they want love without limit. Why should I forgo any possible pleasure, abstain from any sensual experience? I'm young, I'm rich, and I'm beautiful and I shall make the most of that. I shall deny myself nothing.

Thomas (as Kushemski): I certainly respect your devotion to principle.

Vanda (as Dunayev): I don't need your respect, excuse me. I'll take happiness. My happiness, not society's happiness. I will love a man who pleases me, and please a man who makes me happy--but only as long as he makes me happy, not a moment longer.

Vanda (as Dunayev): When she becomes herself--an individual.

Thomas (as Kushemski): you only say that because you yourself are so individual.

Vanda (as Dunayev): A man usually says that to a woman whose individuality he is about to undermine.

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.

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?