David Rabe Quotes & Sayings

Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives. — David Rabe

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes. — David Rabe

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting. — David Rabe

There's no demand for a body of work, though writers will be criticized for not having produced one. — David Rabe

Eddie: You don't have any feelings at all.
Phil: I don't have your feelings, Eddie; that's all. I have my own, they get me by. — David Rabe

I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold. — David Rabe

I never found a professional environment that made the production of plays efficient. Teamwork is demanded, but there are very few teams. — David Rabe

Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing. — David Rabe

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it. — David Rabe

I come in here and you gotta be here; I'm thinkin' about football, and you gotta be here with your tits and your ass and this tight shrunken clothes and these shriveled jeans, so that's all I'm thinking about from the minute I see you is tits and ass. Football doesn't have a chance against it. It's like this invasion of tits and ass overwhelming my own measly individuality so I don't have a prayer to have my own thoughts about my own things except you and tits and ass and sucking and fucking and that's all I can think about. My privacy has been demolished. You think a person wants that kind of a thing to happen their heads - they are trying to give their problems some serious thought, the next thing they know there's nothing in their brains as far as they can see but your tits and ass? You think a person likes that? — David Rabe

Murderers don't even know that murder happens. — David Rabe

It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence ... I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling. — David Rabe

I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd ... At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays. — David Rabe

There's little back roads and little towns sometimes I never heard of them. I start to expect the gas station attendants to know me when I arrive. I get excited that I've been there before. I want them to welcome me. I'm disappointed when they don't. Something that I don't want to be true starts lookin' like it's al that's true only I don't know what it is. No. No. I need my marriage. I come here to tell you. I got to stay married. I'm lost without her. — David Rabe