Famous Quotes & Sayings

Marsha Norman Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 50 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Marsha Norman.

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Famous Quotes By Marsha Norman

Marsha Norman Quotes 1451749

Mama: But something might happen. Something that might change everything. Who knows what it might be, but it might be worth waiting for! (Jessie doesn't respond.) Try if for two more weeks.
Jessie: No, Mama
Mama: i'll pay more attention to you. Tell the truth when you ask me. Let you have your say.
Jessie: No, Mama. This is how I have my say. This is how I say what I thought about it ALL and I say No. To Dawson and Loretta and the Red Chinese and epilepsy and Ricky and Cicel and you. And me. And hope. I say No., — Marsha Norman

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Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself. — Marsha Norman

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In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company. — Marsha Norman

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I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career. — Marsha Norman

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I'm who I was waiting for. I didn't make it. — Marsha Norman

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Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it's hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don't get off is it's still fifty blocks from where you're going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it's the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I've had enough, it's my stop. I've had enough. — Marsha Norman

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He felt sorry for me. He wanted a plain country woman and that's what he married, and then he held it against me the rest of my life like I was supposed to change and surprise him somehow. — Marsha Norman

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How could I love him, Jessie. I didn't have a thing he wanted. — Marsha Norman

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On the whole the American theater, dominated by men, does not perceive women fighting for their lives as a central issue. — Marsha Norman

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Family is just accident, Jessie. It's nothing personal, hon. They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are. — Marsha Norman

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I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals. — Marsha Norman

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People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it. — Marsha Norman

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I only told you about it because I thought I might get a laugh out of you for once even if it wasn't the truth, Jessie. Things don't have to be true to talk about 'em, you know. — Marsha Norman

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My view is that musicals are love stories with great final scenes. It's just that simple. Musicals are also conflicts between two worlds. And by those criteria, 'The Color Purple' is actually exactly the kind of story that makes for a great musical. Yes, it's got hard stuff in it, but so does 'Les Miserables' and 'Phantom of the Opera.' — Marsha Norman

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Write about the thing that frightens you most. — Marsha Norman

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If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the other person's turn to talk. But in a song, you can sing about it for another three minutes. The musical form has that unique opportunity to express at length what joy really feels like. — Marsha Norman

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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

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We have to hear the stories of women at all ages of their lives in order to really present a picture of what it felt like to be alive in our time. That's what our job is as writers is to present that and create it. Our job as writers isn't to make as much money as we can. Our job is to create a record of this time. That's why if you leave out women and the stories of women, we failed at our mission. All of us. Men and women. — Marsha Norman

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I feel that I speak the musical language. — Marsha Norman

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I loved that bridge he built over the creek in the back of the house. [ ... ] Or that baby bed he built for Ricky. I told him he didn't have to spend so much time on it, but he said it had to last, and the thing ended up weighing two hundred pounds and I couldn't move it. I said, 'How long does a baby bed have to last, anyway?' But maybe he thought if it was strong enough, it might keep Ricky a baby. — Marsha Norman

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I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used. — Marsha Norman

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How can I get up everyday knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive and I couldn't do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie? — Marsha Norman

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There are days when I think the National Endowment for the Arts should issue a quota system for the production of plays by women - especially when you realize women buy 70 percent of all theater tickets. — Marsha Norman

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People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts. — Marsha Norman

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There are things that music can do that language could never do, that painting could never do, or sculpture. Music is capable of going directly to the source of the mystery. It doesn't have to explain it. It can simply celebrate it. — Marsha Norman

Marsha Norman Quotes 1884977

MAMA: I'm afraid of it, for me, I mean. When my time comes. I know it's coming, but...
JESSIE: You don't know when. Like in a scary movie.
MAMA: Yeah, sneaking up on me like some killer on the loose, hiding out in the back yard just waiting for me to have my hands full someday and how am I supposed to protect myself anyhow when I don't know what he looks like and I don't know how he sounds coming up behind me like that or if it will hurt or take very long or what I don't get done before it happens. — Marsha Norman

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When 'night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway. — Marsha Norman

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What I hope to do is create a play that investigates the ongoing violence toward women and children in the world, and searches for some kind of answer to the question, 'What Can We Do?' — Marsha Norman

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Dreams are illustrations ... from the book your soul is writing about you. — Marsha Norman

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During the day, our souls gather their ... impressions of us, how our lives feel ... Our spirits collect these impressions, keep them together, like wisps of smoke in a bag. Then, when we're asleep, our brains open up these bags of smoke ... and take a look. — Marsha Norman

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If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright. — Marsha Norman

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At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself. — Marsha Norman

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Think of a musical as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string, you can't put the pearls around your neck. — Marsha Norman

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Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write. — Marsha Norman

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I see it on his face. I hear it when he talks. We look out at the world and we see the same thing: Not Fair. And the only difference between us is Ricky's out there trying to get even. And he knows not trust anybody and he got it straight from me. And he knows not to try and get work, and guess where he got that. He walks around like there's loose boards in the floor, and you know who laid that floor, I did. — Marsha Norman

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What's so good about a heaven where, one of these days, you're going to get your embarrassing old body back? — Marsha Norman

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He loved me, Mama. He just didn't know how things fall down around me like they do. I think he did the right thing. He gave himself another chance, that's all.....I was trying to say it's all right that Cecil left. It was...a relief in a way. I never was what he wanted to see, so it was better when he wasn't looking at me all the time. — Marsha Norman

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No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to. It's all I really have that belongs to me and I'm going to say what happens to it. And it's going to stop. And I'm going to stop it. So. Let's just have a good time. — Marsha Norman

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After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as 'night, Mother.' — Marsha Norman

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I hate milk. Coats your throat as bad as okra. Something just downright disgusting about it. — Marsha Norman

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Success is always something that you have to recover from. — Marsha Norman

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We are not afraid to look under the bed, or to wash the sheets; we know that life is messy. We know that somebody has to clean it up, and that only if it is cleaned up can we hope to start over, and get better. — Marsha Norman

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Mama: ... you can keep trying. You can get brave and try some more. You don't have to give up.
Jessie: I'm NOT giving up. This IS the other thing I'm trying. And I'm sure there are some other things that might work, but MIGHT work isn't good enough any more. I need something that WILL work. THIS will work. That's why I picked it. — Marsha Norman

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It was his idea to go horseback riding that day. It was his idea I could do anything if I just made up my mind to. I fell off the horse because I didn't know how to hold on. Cecil left for pretty much the same reason. — Marsha Norman

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I never said I knew much. How was I supposed to learn anything living out here? I didn't know enough to do half the things I did in my life. Things happen. You do what you can about them and you see what happens next. — Marsha Norman

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Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me. — Marsha Norman

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Why do you have to know so much about things, Jessie? There's just not that much to things that I could ever see. — Marsha Norman

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There is no point in trying to remember your dreams ... There is only the unspeakable joy of eavesdropping on your spirit, catching tiny glimpses of its independent life, resting for a moment in its wisdom, puzzling, laughing sometimes, over what it's up to, what it makes of you. — Marsha Norman

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Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered. — Marsha Norman

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When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with. — Marsha Norman