Playwright Quotes

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

On the day the world is blown up, the playwright whose show opened the night before will be leafing past the news section of the Times to find his review
as he ascends through the stratosphere, oblivious. ~ Arthur Miller

It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other, it becomes this paralyzing monolith. ~ Richard Greenberg

We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. ~ Steven Pressfield

It's an odd mix, the life of a playwright. ~ Laura Wade

The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright [Sophocles] says, it 'brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.' Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.
... I, having realized the effects wrought by Time, desire now by means of my writings to give an account of my father's deeds, which do not deserve to be consigned to Forgetfulness nor to be swept away on the flood of Time into an ocean of Non-Remembrance; I wish to recall everything ... ~ Anna Comnena

I come from a family of writers. My mom had been a writer, nonfiction books, and her mother was a playwright in the 1930s and '40s. And my twin brother, Alexi, is a writer on 'The Following.' ~ Noah Hawley

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

Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Source: Wikipedia ~ Victor Hugo

So, I'm a playwright. In Minneapolis. Which means that I find myself operating in a pretty lefty crowd, most of the time. And most of my energy goes towards arguing with that, and musing about how I really fucking can't stand Democrats. So I was startled to be reminded of a fact that I'd almost entirely forgotten: I really fucking can't stand Republicans. ~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

My wife thinks I think I'm such hot stuff. She's wrong. I don't think I'm such hot stuff.

My hero George Bernard Shaw, socialist, and shrewd and funny playwright, said in his eighties that if he was considered smart, he sure pitied people who were considered dumb. He said that, having lived as long as he had, he was at last sufficiently wise to serve as a reasonably competent office boy.

That's how I feel. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A play is a blueprint of an event: a way of creating and rewriting history through the medium of literature. Since history is a recorded or remembered event, theatre, for me, is the perfect place to 'make' history--that is, because so much of African-American history has been unrecorded, dismembered, washed out, one of my tasks as a playwright is to--through literature and the special strange relationship between theatre and real-life--locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down. ~ Suzan-Lori Parks

Wisdom comes with winters ~ Oscar Wilde

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

I am an internationally produced playwright. ~ Israel Horovitz

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage. ~ Edward Albee

Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent - fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience. ~ Tennessee Williams

Imagine the literary buff, steeped in his beloved classics, rejoicing in a memory that sings, prepared to dispense kilowatts of goodwill, who fetches up at the Odeon on an off day. There are days like that, when everything rings hollow, and even the hollowness is unconvincing. There's nothing to be done about it: the inspiration's not there. He's left with a terrible sense of disappointment, resentment, against whom he doesn't exactly know: the playwright or the actors? All he can do is curl up in bed, alone, all alone, and console himself with suitably wrought alexandrines. ~ Jacques Yonnet

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

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright. ~ Beth Henley

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

I know too many playwrights, or would-be playwrights, or would-have-been playwrights, that are around my age, who were bitter or have gone to something else because they got such a raw deal from critics, and some are quite wonderful writers. ~ Jennifer Tipton

The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart. ~ Marsha Norman

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins. ~ Adam Rapp

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

One of the best things that happened for me as a playwright is becoming a comic-book writer. ~ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

I'm not posh at all. I grew up in Sheffield but never managed to pick up the accent - which was careless because there'd be some cache now in being a northern playwright, but I missed out on that one. ~ Laura Wade

comedic playwright. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can. ~ Tennessee Williams

I want to be a playwright the way people are bank tellers. I want to keep doing it and have it go steadily and smoothly. ~ Richard Greenberg

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it. ~ Edward Albee

Playwrights are naturally wary and protective - God, who's more protective than a playwright? You read a play, the playwright wants to hear from you immediately. ~ Gene Saks

Love is two minds without a single thought. ~ Philip Barry

At first, this earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes
And yet be patient. Our playwright may show
In some filth act what this wild drama means. ~ Jack London

I started writing because it was hard to find acting jobs. I didn't like any monologues in auditions, so I started to write my own things. Since then, I have written a couple of shows. I was nominated for playwright of the year for a play I wrote called 'Potential Space.' ~ Kirsten Vangsness

The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience. ~ F. Sionil Jose

Maybe she would have done more good as a playwright than as a doctor, after all - clichés were like plaque in the arteries of the imagination, they clogged the sense of what was possible. Maybe if enough people had worked to demolish clichés, the world wouldn't have ended. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O'Neill, Tennessee and me? ~ Mae West

About 2500 years ago Aeschylus, the Greek playwright, wrote, He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. These remarkable photos and the stories that accompany them should be on billboards from sea to shining sea, so the pain and suffering they represent might fall drop by drop upon the American psyche and against our will, by the awful grace of God, wisdom might come to these United States and her foreign policy. ~ Gioconda Belli

San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind. ~ Gavin Newsom

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door." The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve? ~ Al Gore

You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work. ~ David Henry Hwang

What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler. ~ Tawfiq Al-Hakim

I took a page from [the playwright] Wendy Wasserstein's book. She said 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.' ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead. ~ David Mamet

With [Columbus'] sailors ready to revolt, land--as if cued by a hack playwright--suddenly materialized at the horizon on October 12, 1492. ~ Alan Axelrod

Portraying Mozart is a scary task. Whenever I'm asked to portray actual historic figures, it comes with extra accountability. Not just to your director and playwright, but to the man himself and the beloved persona that the public forms. ~ Rob McClure

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

I think that as a playwright, if I detail that environment, then I'm taking away something from them [designers]. I'm taking away their creativity and their ability to have input themselves, not just to follow what the playwright has written. So I do a minimum set description and let the designers create within that. ~ August Wilson

We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. ~ C.S. Lewis

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus. ~ Peter Ustinov

The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented his reputation, largely because of the movie version. Another battle of wills, it was the story of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of lesser composer Antonio Salieri. ~ Bob Mondello

I now know that to do a worthwhile family history I must interpret the past without falling into either demonizing or unquestioning acceptance ... As a playwright, what I object to right now is any form of fundamentalism, whether it's nationalistic, religious or ethnic ... I think it is ridiculous - and fundamentalist, by the way - to say that I am not changed by the culture around me. ~ David Henry Hwang

I learned from the Macarturos. I had never been at a table with a labor organizer and a playwright and a performance artist and an anthropologist and a human rights lawyer. Usually at most gatherings, it's all writers. But suddenly I was at a table with all these different people and I learned from each of them, learned from the work they're doing, learned new ways to solve my problems. ~ Sandra Cisneros

It's very hard to be a playwright because it's very competitive. ~ Jesse Eisenberg

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can't polish what you haven't written.

Things that made for a normal life - like a daily routine that followed the sun - took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn't a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep.

He would often awake with a new idea - as if he'd merely been on a break and not unconscious - and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot's seat in a ship that could go anywhere. ~ Vincent H. O'Neil

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

Athol Fugard became famous as a playwright, so although 'Tsotsi' the book was written in the '60s, it was only published in the '80s. It was then optioned pretty much every year by producers. I think the problem was that holding onto its period setting made it very hard to get finance. ~ Gavin Hood

I know all about improvisation and the free-form that mirrors the chaos of our time, but I do like to feel that the playwright has done some work before I got there. ~ Jean Kerr

You can make a killing as a playwright in America, but you can't make a living. ~ Sherwood Anderson

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Man is not himself only ... He is all that he sees; all that flows to him from a thousand sources ... He is the land, the lift of its mountain lines, the reach of its valleys. ~ Mary Hunter Austin

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people. ~ Tony Kushner

I think he [Vaclav Havel] probably would have liked to have written more plays. I think he missed being a playwright.I think he talked about wanting to write plays and keep appealing to people through that medium, rather than politics. ~ Judy Woodruff

I don't believe in politics. I'm an anarchist, I guess you could say. I think people could be just fine looking after themselves. ~ Woody Harrelson

The playwright's rendition of Abraham Lincoln remembers a pitiful little paddlewheel he saw that he could only generate steam to EITHER blow the ship's whistle OR move the wheel. Just as the little ship could not do both, Lincoln fears that very few can actually think and speak at the same time. ~ Norman Corwin

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow. ~ Thornton Wilder

If I'd seen a playwright ever write an' play at the same time, I'd have given 'em more of a chance at cards. Can I get an 'amen?' ~ Mark Twain

But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next. ~ Mark Gerzon

I felt I was finally in a position to affect not only the artistic content of the American theatre, but also its institutional structures. This has been an important goal of mine, as there have always been a variety of issues - artistic freedom, author's rights, access by minority groups - which have concerned me and even influenced my decision to become a playwright in the first place. ~ David Henry Hwang

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

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

Lou Tyrrell has created a theatre that is a safe haven for playwrights, a birthing center for new American writing. Arts Garage has created a vital, enthusiastic audience for theatre, music, painting and sculpture in Delray Beach. ~ Israel Horovitz

In 1980 I sent a play, 'Jitney,' to the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, won a Jerome Fellowship, and found myself sitting in a room with sixteen playwrights. I remember looking around and thinking that since I was sitting there, I must be a playwright, too. ~ August Wilson

The mission of the playwright is to look in his heart and write, to write whatever concerns him at the moment; to write with passion and conviction. Of course the measure of the man will be the measure of the play. ~ Robert Anderson

Oftentimes the quality of the light tells the story: the time of day, the weather, whether sun is streaming through the window. It can also help you appreciate what the actor is feeling, what the playwright wants you to feel. Any engineer can put a spot on someone. ~ Jules Fisher

One of the things that's different about London and the English market is that theater and film and television are all based in London. It's not quite the same as in the States where if the playwright here wants a successful TV or film career, they're whisked away by Hollywood. ~ Colin Callender

I had never read a book written by an African-American. I didn't know that black people could write books. I didn't know that blacks had done any great things. I was always conscious of my inferiority and I always remembered my place - until the Civil Rights Movement came to the town where I was born and grew up. ~ Endesha Ida Mae Holland

Tom Stoppard, the English-speaking world's brainiest playwright, thinks that British audiences have grown too dumb to understand his plays. ~ Terry Teachout

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays. ~ Robert Dessaix

At best, the relationship between drama critic and playwright is a pretty twiggy affair. When I'm asked whom I write for, after the obligatory, I write only for myself, I realize that I have an imaginary circle of peers - writers and respected or savvy theatre folk, some dramatic writers and some not, some living, some long gone ... Often a writer is aware as he works that a certain critic is going to hate this one ... You don't let what a critic might say worry you or alter your work; it might even add a spark to the gleeful process of creation. ~ Lanford Wilson

In the world stage of actors, I'd rather prefer to be the playwright ~ Amit Padhy

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.' ~ Nancy Kress

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head. ~ Orson Welles

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it. ~ John Lahr

If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else. ~ Keith Johnstone

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

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. ~ David Mamet

I was my class playwright and I wrote plays set in villages with kings and chiefs.My plays were about treason and betrayals. If they were influenced by Macbeth, they were also influenced by Nigerian plays I had seen and Village Headmaster, a television drama series I had watched as a child. ~ Sefi Atta

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

Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

My mother was an actress and a director, as well. And my father was a playwright and poet. ~ Maximilian Schell

He can see what move I'm planning to make in chess and counters before I can do it. He always knows who the killer is in a detective story. I think he could make a career out of detecting, but he wants to write plays for theater. Maybe he could be a Shakespeare instead of a Sherlock. He could be anything. Anything he wants to be. ~ Sangu Mandanna

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

The classical writers ... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically. ~ Timothy West

And tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me ... ~ Sarah Kane

As playwrights, as poets, we have to look to ourselves, listen to our guts for the final answers about what changes to make. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. And it's not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it's your baby and you know what's best. ~ Stephen Karam

A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman. ~ Russell Baker

To me, the job of a playwright is to explore and bring to light our lives. You can't hold back; you have to give in to this. Sometimes, you say things people don't want to hear. ~ Ted Lange

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka. ~ Tracie Thoms