Playwright Drama Quotes & Sayings

Built up by the contiguity of the memories that followed one another, the black tunnel, in which my thoughts had been straying so long that they had even ceased to be aware of it, was suddenly broken by an interval of sunlight, allowing me to see in the distance a blue and smiling universe in which Albertine was no more than a memory, unimportant and full of charm. Is it this, I asked myself, that is the true Albertine, or is it indeed the person who, in the darkness through which I have so long been rolling, seemed to me the sole reality? — Marcel Proust

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

I made so many B pictures I began to get fan mail from hornets...and for me that was an improvement. — Bob Hope

I've had a long association with the theater over the years but I had never produced a play and it was something that I'd always wanted to do.The movies moved away from dramas, and I think that I'm very excited by the opportunity to take smart writing that takes risks and see it on stage. It's exciting to see that engagement between the audience and the playwright. — Colin Callender

Nobody is strong and nobody is weak if he conceives of the body, from the head to the sole of the foot, as a unity in which a living mind circulates everywhere equally. — Miyamoto Musashi

We all have to face our faults and mistakes, and then choose to overcome them or let them drag us down. — Jessica Lave

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

I know that I'm better as an actor when I'm working with a good actor. I think anytime you're working with a better actor, it makes you a better actor. — Ben Stiller

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

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

He watched the newly arrived commuters as they stepped into the carriage, pushed their way down the tube, the odours from their damp clothes mingling, giving off varying degrees of mustiness: London grime, or smoke from airless offices. A woman wearing a blue swing coat glanced along the carriage, casting around for an empty seat. Her pale skin, the searching green eyes, reminded him of Emma. Briefly, he felt his breath catch; he stood, clambered back over his neighbour and indicated for her to take his seat. And so his mind stayed with Emma when he knew he should be working out a strategy for telling Dorothy of his news. But Emma was never far away; like the glitter balls in dance halls, she would slowly rotate in his memory, different facets reappearing, as the hues changed in her auburn hair. — Amanda Sington-Williams

Grand Central really didn't want me doing anything under my own name but the 'Kitty' novels. — Carrie Vaughn

If you can't look in the mirror and genuinely love 100% of what you see, how can you possibly say "i love you" to someone else. — Behdad Sami

When one has suspected a thing for weeks, why is being confronted with stark evidence so much worse? — Teresa Grant

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

See ... What I felt they should have done, for our first public works project, is build a giant wall ... across the entire border of Canada. Because that's where the cold air comes from. — Lewis Black

There are more idiots in the world than bright ones, but it's the odd good one that makes a big difference. — Karl Pilkington

She was so stupid. Such a stupid, stupid girl.
For ever thinking she could be admired, adored, or noticed. For every thinking she could be anything at all. — Marissa Meyer

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant. — Wilson Mizner

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it. — Noel Coward

I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity. — Fernando Pessoa

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

I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other. — Audre Lorde

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 became frustrated early on as a playwright by a kind of smug smallness in modern drama. There was a lack of what I now understand as courage in the work of others as well as in my own work, and I found I was mildly amused or interested by such plays but not deeply engaged or enlightened. — Ellen McLaughlin