Play Writing Quotes & Sayings

The culturally specific, in particular, the American porch play that American writers have cherished and loved for many years in terms of their new writing, has seemed to have very little relevance to a much more fast-flowing, abstract, experimental drama that has been emerging in [the UK]. The porch play, not to mention that thing of, Oops, I wasn't loved enough by my father, somehow didn't have the relevance in this country. — Stephen Daldry

I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone's life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager's first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can't have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can't play it safe. Great writing isn't safe. — Dan Alatorre

Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damned fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the ... — Rex Stout

If I'm feeling something, I know if it's a song, or if it's a little story that I'm going to write, or if it's a painting or play. I might sit down and write a play. — Michael Marisi Ornstein

I'd always fantasized about writing a new play. Even when I had all this success in television, what I was daydreaming about in my dressing room is that one day I would do it. — Zach Braff

Writing songs out of my faith was a real natural progression. I grew up singing in my dad's choir and singing with my family. Christian music became the music that I identified myself with and was a way that I expressed my faith. Even at a public school I would take my Christian music in and play it for my friends. — Steven Curtis Chapman

I pretty much spent my twenties as a musician and taking acting classes. I loved it. I was at UCLA getting As and Bs in English and creative writing, basically trying to stay out of the Army. All I really wanted to do was play music. — Robert David Hall

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel. — Gay Talese

In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard. — Russell Baker

When I was growing up, my parents asked me what I wanted to do, and I said that I wanted to live in Springfield. They were like, "Well, that's not how it works. There is an actor who play Homer, and someone who writes what Homer says." So, I was like, "Well, I want to write what Homer says." — Jonah Hill

I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie. — George R R Martin

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally. — Gary Gygax

I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different — Dave Abrams

The play is one of the very few pieces of great dramatic and comic writing that I have read in a long, long time. I was drawn to it because of the power of the writing, which gives me the actor a chance to explore many facets of myself. — Linda Lavin

I, too, am deeply concerned with an overarching idea that dramaturgs are now authors ... I am not taking the position that all dramaturgs own copyright, deserve special billing credit, or should receive remuneration akin to that of the playwright. I know from my ears at the Dramatists Guild that almost everyone a writer encounters has suggestions of how to write and rewrite the play or musical to make it work. — Dana Rosemary Scallon

Yeah, for me there are other challenges that aren't musical too. Like you just don't have as many people to feed off of energy wise, you are loading in and out and you are driving yourself more. Most of the challenges that count are the musical ones. I don't know why people come out to the shows, but I never think that it is to hear me play the guitar and sing. I think it must be in the writing and the presentation, which are the areas that I feel most comfortable. — Stephen Kellogg

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. — Wallace Shawn

You reach a point when you say to yourself, 'Do I want to keep doing this?' There are other things on my plate I want to do - I've been writing a play; I've been neglecting my standup. — Joy Behar

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. — Tennessee Williams

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time ... give it, give it all, give it now. — Annie Dillard

'Now I've tasted chocolate I'm not going back'. That's a great line. That's not me, that's all the writing. I mean it's like it doesn't matter who plays it, it's a great role. It's such a funny, tongue in cheek kind of great role. — Amanda Bynes

When I write a play, my whole intent at bottom is to get the audience to be in the cast, to get that audience on stage with the actors and to get them thoroughly involved in what's going on. — Jules Feiffer

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage. — Neil Simon

Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician. — Paul Bley

I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love. — Anton Chekhov

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing. — Irwin Shaw

I used to play guitar for myself and write lyrics and listen to different styles of music. — Rokia Traore

So I wanted to write a play that put some thoughts and feelings in the air about the miracle and the mystery and that alluded to deep and unknown forces. But then really just have people going to the store and fixing the sink and going through the normal things of looking for love and getting up in the morning. Because that's how we live. — Will Eno

There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters ... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear ... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of. — Malcolm Forbes

I think I give far more space and play to avant-garde writing than any other contemporary textbook author. I want students to be able to decide for themselves which aesthetics are closest to their own. Still, while I try not to be a nostalgist myself, I suppose I am drawn to those poignant moments in our lives, rendered clearly and artfully. — David Starkey

All prizes have a role, if they are run with integrity and with a clear focus on reading and quality writing. I don't think any of them is necessary, but they all play an incredibly important role in building a body of literature, in introducing new authors to new readers, and extending reading. — Kate Mosse

I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it. — Sarah Ruhl

Writing is one of the best therapies that exist. Either on paper, computer, phone or tablet, in any form it is helpful. Whenever you feel like writing, just do it. Let the words flow out of your mind and heart. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you. Some people may find easier to express themselves in writing than verbally. While you will have time to choose the best words, you will also escape the fear of immediate reaction. Take your time and play with the words until you feel you got them right. One can write about anything. About a dream, a fantasy, a love story, happenings during the day, an apology or a greeting, everything is permitted in the world of writing. There it is no good or bad. — Nico J. Genes

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player. — Ornette Coleman

When I got to LA and was with the James Gang, I got the opportunity to write a lot, to play in front of large audiences, make some money. — Tommy Bolin

I think the only real referent for anybody writing drama is probably Hamlet. You have the most extreme tragic drama, this sort of blood-boltered thing, but it's also very funny, which is simply a matter of the playwright being alive and observant and entertaining, and understanding not only the world but what will play. — William Monahan

It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought. — Susanna Kaysen

I write a book of poems and then the characters won't go away so I write a play from that. — Grace Cavalieri

Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one. — Anton Chekhov

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play. — Hugh Leonard

Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it. — David McCullough

I don't just strictly sample. I build. I'm a musician: I play piano and drums, I read notes, I write music. — AraabMuzik

The French write plays and paint as naturally as we play jazz - it's just a national gift. — Alice B. Toklas

When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don't put down a word until the play seems ready to be written. — Edward Albee

I'm sensitive about the criticism [for not producing new playwrights], yes. But I'm hip to it as well. I read 500 new plays a year, and 99.99 percent of them are not good. I see no reason to do a new play just because it's new. It's like kissing your sister, a virtue, but so what? It seems to me more worthwhile to take a proven playwright and say, Write something for us. — Gregory A. Boyd

I wanted to play piano, and that slid quickly into writing - it wasn't enough to play other people's notes: I had to write notes too. — Luc Ferrari

I used to be the guy who wanted to do everything myself, wanted to write and play everything myself, but the older I've gotten, the more collaborations I've gotten. I really enjoy working with other people to create different styles of music, because I really do listen to everything, and I enjoy every kind of music. I think some of the best stuff comes from working with people who have different perspectives on the same thing. — Piggy D.

Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano. — Caleb Landry Jones

I could always hold a melody, but I was never like, I'm going to be a singer. So I'm able to use that when I write. I'm actually playing the beat with my voice. Instead of thinking about coming up with melodies, it's like filling in the instruments. So sometimes it's better to have beats with less melodies in them, because then I can play more with my vocals. — Kid Ink

When we go into the 80's it has more of a pop feel. But it's what I wanted to do. I wasn't trying to reach. See, that's the thing with me, I never wanted to reach any particular crowd. I'm writing for myself. If I don't like it I won't play it for anybody. — Shuggie Otis

Once you play with these scenes and you're outlining it, again and again, and telling each other the narrative, and telling it to people you know, trying to make sure that the mathematics of the story work, you feel that those are in place, and the actual writing and final draft doesn't take as long. — Brit Marling

I play piano and write better than I can sing. — Irene Cara

I mean that's something we're very conscious of when writing. Tempos are very important. Like "Oh we can't play the song too fast because people aren't going to feel it." There's a pulse to a song. You can't play it too slow. We're always trying to find the perfect tempo. — Tony Palermo

God gives gifts to everyone, some can write, some can dance. He gave me the skill to play football and I am making the most of it. — Ronaldinho

The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together. — Tom Stoppard

Many of our students want to do what they have done and that has made them successful thus far in their lives: play by the rules, and do what is expected. But as much social science research and writing by Malcolm Gladwell, among others, make clear, the rules are mostly created by those already in power so obtaining power often entails standing out and breaking rules and social conventions. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

The dogged effort to "denaturalize" gender in this text emerges, I think, from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturalization was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or prescribe theatrical antics in the place of "real" politics, as some critics have conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as such. — Judith Butler

Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It's stuff that doesn't fly by tropes or adhere to rules
appropriate, perhaps, since young adults tend to flick cigarettes in the eyes of the rules and don't play by social norms as much as adults do. — Chuck Wendig

As a writer, I marinate, speculate, and hibernate. — Trisha Sugarek

Sometimes I don't pick up the guitar for six months or so," "Other times I get away, go to a hotel or something, to write songs. Or go stay with a friend and bring the dog and do stuff away from my normal routine. Then I sit down and play guitar at night. I do it differently every time . There is no set way. — Holly Golightly

That's the way I came up, writing and recording at home. I developed by playing everything myself. I was a drummer first and that's my favorite instrument to play. Once I get the drums done, everything else comes real quick. Also, we track in my friends' garage, which is really small ... there's not really room to record live with a band. — Pete Yorn

The music I was writing for 'Hamlet' needed to be very simple because there was so much going on with the dialogue in that play, so I felt like the music had to complement that - so that carried on through; I was working on the soundtrack and the album simultaneously. — Sarah Blasko

My son is a great kid and does super well in school. I couldn't be prouder of him. What I tell him is, 'You don't want to just be known for being the son of a rich rock 'n' roll star.' I've seen a lot of kids like that. I want him to be happy, work hard and create his own thing. I tell him, 'You're not gonna be one of these kids up on stage playing with me. If you wanna have hits - write your own. Then we can play together.' — Kid Rock

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer. — Leo Tolstoy

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music. — Lenny Kravitz

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what. — Chris Cornell

There is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more elaborate is just more and more fun. — Gish Jen

Revision plays a very large role in writing. Sometimes it seems to be all revision. And the longer I write, the more I revise-until it is completely right. — Ellen Hunnicutt

When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water ... You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to. — Alan Lightman

It's one thing to write the music, it's another thing to write it down, it's another thing to play it, and something else altogether again to learn how to play it. These are the elements that are fascinating, and, you know, move my world. — Gail Zappa

I didn't want to be a sideman. My own style was coming out and I was into my own writing. I wrote a whole album, I arranged it all with pencil and paper. I did eventually do a lot of work with my father, but that was different. I was living at home; I wasn't a starving musician. I wasn't spoiled, but I wasn't going to have some producer come in and tell me what to play. — Shuggie Otis

You guys will write what you want to write, people will say what they want to say. I can't control any of that. All I can control is how I play. I'm trying to be the best player I can be. — Jason Spezza

It is the work of the Canadian artist to paint or play or write in such a way that life will be enlarged for himself and his fellow man. The painter will look around him ... and finding everything good, will strive to communicate that feeling through a portrayal of the essentials of sunlight, or snow, or tree or tragic cloud, or human face, according to his power and individuality. — J. E. H. MacDonald

I got really into writing plays. I did that for years and years and got some produced and didn't like it as much when I wasn't able to control it. — Jake M. Johnson

When you are a free and independent writer, without employer, without hours or deadlines, you have to play little games to force yourself into the actual writing. For me, one game is to announce...that I have finally decided on my next book, that I am ready to write it...to put my pride on the line. — Irving Wallace

I love being in the studio, and I am a huge fan of live music. Without writing good stuff in the studio, you have nothing to play live. — Anthony Hamilton

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both. — August Wilson

No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know. — W.S. Gilbert

The myth stems from the belief that writing is some mystical process. That it's magical. That it abides by its own set of rules different from all other forms of work, art, or play.But that's bullshit. Plumbers don't get plumber's block. Teachers don't get teacher's block. Soccer players don't get soccer block. What makes writing different? Nothing. The only difference is that writers feel they have a free pass to give up when writing is hard. — Patrick Rothfuss

I write lyrics. I play the guitar. If the rest of the band had to do my schedule, they would be dead — John Frusciante

I did a thing called 24 Hour Plays, a thing they do every year on Broadway. A bunch of playwrights and actors get together, you write a play and you act it out in 24 hours, literally. People pay and the money goes to charity. So I did one - I was horrible. I was bad. I was terrified. And I was like, "Oh, I gotta do this again." Because I know I can do it. — Scott Raab

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell. — Chuck Berry

For me, writing plays is far more an act of the mind than of the emotions. It's a very different kind of impulse than fiction writing. — Jim Grimsley

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can. — Guy Clark

Sometimes when I'm writing I'll play Cole Porter, just because the rhythms and the lyrics are so perfect that it's like having a smart partner in the room. I have a huge collection of music that I listen to when I'm writing, and I also prepare a lot of music before I start directing. I put it all onto an iPod that I have with me on the set. It's helpful to the actors, because for an emotional scene, I'll play it and say, this is how it feels, to keep us in the zone. — Nancy Meyers

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first. — Jean Kerr

I would rather give up acting than become world famous, because I think you pay a very high price. Writing and putting new plays out into the world has informed what I do, and I've had a lot more freedom to play really interesting parts. — Lindsay Duncan

Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business. — Peter S. Beagle

I can write songs, but I'm not gonna really feel good about the song unless it feels like me, and I'm not gonna release a song or put it on an album or play it in concert unless it really feels like me. — Brett Dennen

The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men's genius. — George Steiner

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played. — Jackson Browne

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. — Gina Greenlee

I think when I first started discovering I could write songs, I was so naive. And it was after I got broken up with and had my heart sliced up into a bunch of little pieces that I was like, "I'm going to say this." I didn't even know how to play guitar. — Gwen Stefani

I love to play guitar. I've been writing my own songs on the axe since I was nine years old. I suck at leads. — Phil Anselmo

When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions
that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. — Edward Albee

When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it. — Mick Jagger

Writing is not the lottery. New writers have to be realistic about what it takes to get published. But there is one similarity to the lottery: You have to play to win. — Lori Perkins

If I write nothing but fiction for some time I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets; then history is a rest, for research or narration brings a different part of the mind into play. — Charlotte Mary Yonge

You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking. — Wayne Kramer

In writing about Red Guard activists during the Cultural Revolution, Anita Chan has observed that the "playing of a role in China was more than a sociological abstraction. Role-playing involved literal play-acting: a conscious assumption of the mannerisms and ways of speaking appropriate to the activist status and role."187 — Perry Link