Plays Quotes & Sayings

I do remember realizing one day that I loved plays more than I loved playing concertos. — John Cariani

It is expensive to give plays subtitles, especially for a short run, so most new dramas rarely cross the transcontinental bridge. — Katori Hall

People clutch onto each other, but the orchestra plays on, because when everything else in life fails, there still has to be music — Anonymous

Skeptics squat by the road like guardians of truth, letting no one pass who doesn't come up to scratch. They never realize that they can see only what their paradigm tells them to look for. If you judge a person only by how well he plays pool, Mozart won't pass scrutiny, but the fault is in your lens. — Deepak Chopra

Most of the note-taking happens while I'm watching television. It's a broad window on the world, and a lot of things are already established in my mind as things I say, things that I'm interested in, things that are fodder for my [stand-up] machine. And when I see something that relates to one of them, I know it instantly and if it's a further exaggeration and a further addition, or an exception - if it plays into furthering my purpose, I jot it down. — George Carlin

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die. — Edward Albee

I was very close to my father. At the age of ten I wanted to do plays, and my father was very encouraging. When I applied to different acting schools, he was right there and very supportive. — Kim Cattrall

One does not play the piano with one's fingers, one plays the piano with one's mind. — Glenn Gould

God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours. — Stanley Kubrick

"The Hallmark Sessions" is an extraordinary release. Breau plays beautiful chords (sounding a little like Johnny Smith in spots) and inventive single-note lines. It is remarkable that this music was not released until 2003, but a happy event that it was finally put out. This is a must for Breau fans and an important release for all jazz guitar lovers. — Scott Yanow

I go to see plays all the time, and whenever I see Chekhov, I'm amazed at how this Russian play strikes home to me living 100 years later in New York City. I'm drawn to him because of his way with characters and their relationships with each other. — Neil Simon

My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport. — Sherman Alexie

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television. — Terry Teachout

All day long because it's what you've been trained to do. But if, in your heart, you believe that the pain you're feeling is real and if you believe it's connected to some underlying condition, it is unlikely that the pain or the spirit will leave. Demons are more sensitive to what you think than what you say. Your belief in the legitimacy of the symptoms plays into the agenda of the evil spirit and what you believe can allow it to remain there. What we believe about the afflicting spirit can either empower it or remove its power over us. The degree to which any spirit can influence us is determined by how much we believe what it says. — Praying Medic

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

That's pretty amazing, the countries thing," I said.
"Yeah, everybody's got a talent. I can memorize things. And you can...?"
"Urn, I know a lot of people's last words." It was an indulgence, learning last words. Other people had chocolate;
I had dying declarations.
"Example?"
"I like Henrik Ibsen's. He was a playwright." I knew a lot about Ibsen, but I'd never read any of his plays. I didn't
like reading
plays. I liked reading biographies.
"Yeah, I know who he was," said Chip.
"Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him,
'You seem to be feeling better this morning/ and Ibsen looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he
died."
Chip laughed. "That's morbid. But I like it. — John Green

For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight - and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles? — Isaac Babel

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it? — J.B. Priestley

He could be anywhere by now, so that is where I look for him. Anywhere...
There are times when I don't recognize this woman who plays with such self-possession. She is something that I have faked. She is William Tyne's daughter, I supposed; his idea of her. I put her forward when I am performing so that he will approach me. I strive to make her taller than she is, more graceful, less unsure. I don't think other people have to try so hard in their lives. Or do they? Are we all living like this? So close to this mesh of nerves?
So I played for my father another concerto, though he was never one for sitting still in a chair. He would make an exception for me, though, his firstborn. He would see the progress I have made. — Claire Kilroy

Catholicism is a really mean religion, and it's incredibly hypocritical. But it plays a role in my life 'cause you can't really get a lot of things out of your head, such as what Jesus Christ looks like and that divorce is a horrible thing. — Madonna Ciccone

History is the view from the cheap seats. Distance from the action provides a unique perspective; one can recognize the plays and appreciate the totality of certain events. — Debra Komar

Kaz narrowed his eyes. I'm not some character out of a children's story who plays harmless pranks and steals from the rich to give to the poor. — Leigh Bardugo

I would rather listen to plays in the car than read them. — Garry Wills

Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little. — Tom Stoppard

My son youngest son David's favorite song - he plays guitar - and he likes "Devil Pray." That's his favorite. — Madonna Ciccone

Chance plays a powerful role in every life - our brains and personalities are just chemical soup, after all; a few drops here or there matter enormously - but consequences often become more serious as income levels go down. — Mohsin Hamid

If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies. — David Mamet

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Even though Sachin is great, I have always found Rahul more solid and hard to get out. He has a solid defense and plays less shots than others. When a batsman plays less shots then it is tough to get him as he makes less mistakes. — Shoaib Akhtar

Interestingly, the word 'person' did not originally refer to the individual in the way we tend to use it today. Instead, 'person' came, via french, from the Latin word 'persona', which referred to the mask worn by tan actor to protray a particular character. In this theatrical sense, personality has to do with the role or character that the person plays in life's drama. The person's individuality, in this sense, is a matter of the roles or characters that he or she assumes. — Nick Haslam

I have a passion for words. I love words. And I'm just learning and developing my skills for words. I do books and I do journalism and plays. I have a broad palette. I don't have a great eye for direction. I love working with actors and I work very well with them because I appreciate what they bring to the table. I'd never say never, of course, but I look at it and don't really fancy it. I want to try and master the word side of it first. — Geoff Thompson

By the 1980s beauty had come to play in women's status-seeking the same role as money plays in that of men: a defensive proof to aggressive competitors of womanhood or manhood. Since both value systems are reductive, neither reward is ever enough, and each quickly loses any relationship to real-life values. — Naomi Wolf

No cricket team in the world depends on one or two players. The team always plays to win. — Virat Kohli

Golf is recognized as one of the more difficult games to play or teach. One reason for this is that each person necessarily plays by feel, and a feel is almost impossible to describe. — Bobby Jones

Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat. — E.B. White

Silence, that inspired dealer, takes the day's deck, the life, all in a crazy heap, lays it out, and plays its flawless hand of solitaire, every card in place. Scoops them up, and does it all over again. — Patricia Hampl

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history. — Antony Sher

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

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

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding. — Robyn Schneider

Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse. — Elizabeth Kenny

GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws
riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public
knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
ROS: And talking to himself.
GUIL: And talking to himself. — Tom Stoppard

Bealer argues that the kind of naturalistic view which Quine holds will rob him of the ability to make the normative claims which (many) naturalists wish to make in epistemology. I don't think this is right about Quine, but I'm certain it's not right about my own view. To the extent that I can show that talk of knowledge is firmly rooted within empirical theories where it plays an important explanatory role, I thereby demonstrate its naturalistic credentials. — Hilary Kornblith

If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad. — Michael Hastings

Somebody who likes to do my plays is a good director for them. — Tom Stoppard

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. — Warren Buffett

I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not. — J.D. Salinger

My plays aren't stylistically the same. Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental. — Suzan-Lori Parks

Music plays a huge role in my life. It is music that helps me to endure ... well ... everything there is to endure. — Muriel Barbery

This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if they couldn't love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe. *** The black people would not put up with this. They went on talking English every which way. They refused to read books they couldn't understand - on the grounds they couldn't understand them. They would ask such impudent questions as, Whuffo I want to read no Tale of Two Cities? Whuffo? — Kurt Vonnegut

The only difference was, you could play the music again and again; a life plays only once. — Peter Robinson

I don't put pressure on myself. When I put pressure on myself, then I just play bad. When I play bad, my team plays bad. — Carmelo Anthony

I love the spontaneity of plays and of being onstage, because that's an energy that you can't really fabricate in movies. — Chloe Grace Moretz

I sit every once in a while and I think about plays and films I can do with William Petersen into our eighties. He's the most incredible scene partner I've ever had. — Jorja Fox

The list of my favorite experiences would almost equal the list of plays I've been in. There are a few exceptions, but out of politeness I'm not going to mention them. If you don't have a few stinkers, you can't appreciate the good ones. — T. R. Knight

Love makes you crazy. Love crawls into your brain and plays games with your neurons. All the things you thought you knew about yourself fly out the window when love flies in. — Barbara Bretton

Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication. — Andrew Weil

The British story of Peter Pan is about a boy who never grows up and plays all day. — Donna Jo Napoli

From a man who fights like crazy, arouses me like no other, is the sexiest thing I've ever seen. From the man who plays me sexy music, gives me his t-shirt to sleep in, protects me as fiercely as a lion, and yet won't take me when I'm naked and trembling in his arms ... — Katy Evans

The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigenia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world. — Oscar Wilde

My poor sister was forced to be in the plays that I would write. We would go to my grandma's retirement building and perform 'Phantom of the Opera.' — Lindy Booth

Politics is like a stage. Each politician plays his part according to the lines that are given to him. But backstage, the hero and the villain enjoy their drink together. Everybody — Ashwin Sanghi

The nice thing about growing up in that kind of environment is you were exposed to so much
music, plays, art exhibits, rock concerts. — Perrey Reeves

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana. — Beth Henley

I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they're a game, that's where they should end. Things shouldn't start as games and be taken to movies. — Rich Sommer

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either. — Mignon McLaughlin

We had very good discussions on current security challenges and NATO's continued adaptation to meet them. Canada is a committed ally and a capable contributor to international security. We appreciate your quick decision to deploy forces, planes and ships to strengthen our collective defence in view of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, as well as your contribution to the international anti-ISIL coalition. Canada plays a major part in our decision-making and helps keep the vital bond between Europe and North America strong. — Jens Stoltenberg

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil. — Alfred North Whitehead

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works. — Naomi Watts

When I was first starting to write plays, I quite literally had never heard of the idea of studying playwriting. I wouldn't have studied it even if I had heard of it. — Wallace Shawn

Play not for gain, but sport. Who plays for more
Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart;
Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore. — George Herbert

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire. — John Roberts

Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin I and II are classics. As a player he's very good in the studio, but I've never seen him play well live. He's sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. If you put out a good album and play like a two year old, what's the purpose? — Eddie Van Halen

When I was about 6, my cousin was very active in a Filipino repertory company, doing musicals and plays. Her aunt was one of the founders of the company, and she told my mom that there were these auditions for 'The King and I,' and that they needed kids. I auditioned, got in and the love affair started from there and just kept going. — Lea Salonga

One of the things that gives me a lot of pleasure about both the solo show and the book is that it tells people about my dad. He really was an important man. He was a kind of pioneer of regional theater. He was the first American producer to ever produce all of Shakespeare plays. — John Lithgow

The best team does not always win, it's the team that plays the best. — Rob Bell

It's odd that the people who worry whether certain plays are "morally offensive" so rarely worry about the moral offensiveness of war, poverty, bigotry. — Sydney J. Harris

Google's architectural model around broadband and services and so forth plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is doing. We're a perfect back end to the problems that they're trying to solve. — Eric Schmidt

Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we're crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2. — Alain De Botton

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage. — Terry Teachout

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

I had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays. — Lena Dunham

Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential' — Edward Albee

Oxytocin, a hormone and neuropeptide ... plays a major role in attachment processes and serves several purposes: It causes women to go into labor, strengthens attachment, and ... [increases] trust and cooperation. We get a boost of oxytocin in our brain during orgasm and even when we cuddle -- which is why it's been tagged the "cuddle hormone." How is oxytocin related to conflict reduction? Sometimes we spend less quality time with our partner -- especially when other demands on us are pressing. However, neuroscience findings suggest that we should change our priorities. By forgoing closeness with our partners, we are also missing our oxytocin boost -- making us less agreeable to the world around us and more vulnerable to conflict. — Amir Levine

I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays. — Christopher Meloni

A person may have no relatives anywhere, but Mahamaya may make him keep a cat and thus make him worldly. This is how She plays! — Sarada Devi

For most Americans, poetry plays no role in their everyday lives. But also for most Americans, contemporary painting or jazz or sculpture play no role either. I'm not saying poetry is singled out as a special thing to ignore. — Billy Collins

Nat's face softens, her lips tilt at the corner and she speaks full of awe, "Wow."
Still chuckling, I ask, "What?"
She shifts from one foot to the other, looks to the ground and says softly, "That's the first time I've heard you laugh." She nervously plays with a ring on her finger. "That's one of the nicest sounds I've ever heard, Ghost. You should do it more often. — Belle Aurora

I never planned any of this, so I don't even think about getting acting jobs. If they call, they call. I sure don't sit on the sidelines waiting to be asked, like a nice little Catholic girl at the dance. I keep myself extremely busy. I've written 91 plays! I love to read. And I always have something to clean. — Robert Michael Morris

I'm told I was acting in school plays when I was a tiny little boy at the age of three, so they must have seen something then. And even when I was practicing piano eight hours a day, I was still doing school plays. — Christian McKay

Because in the end, we die. It's like Chekhov observed in so many of his plays: 'in two hundred years, no one will even know we were here. — Zack Love

There are more important ways of earning a living, aren't there? Like being a neurosurgeon. But some plays are very important, aren't they? — Michael Gambon

Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy. — Haruki Murakami

My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top. — Gore Vidal

A married couple that plays cards together is just a fight that hasn't started yet. — George Burns

This is why the classical of the jazz music station plays?
to give a ground of meaning to our pain? — Adrienne Rich

My first plays were amazingly bad, but I had a teacher who thought I had promise, and he kept working with me. I finally went to a summer workshop before my senior year with people like Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes who encouraged me to write from my subconscious, and suddenly all this material about culture clash came out. — David Henry Hwang

Right-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired. — Hal Crowther

In one of my plays, honestly I forget with one, I wrote that relationships only end in one of two ways: They end in divorce or they end in death. Ironically, death is the happier ending. (Mac) — Marshall Thornton

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live. — Keith Jarrett