Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.
Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end.
What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'
The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.
American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
The final evaluation of a play has nothing to do with immediate audience or critical response.
Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.
Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process--it is, after all, black magic.
To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.
I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up?
I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it.
Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.
I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.
If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme. I don't think it can be argued.
I imagine as an axiom you could say that the better the play, the less "creativity" the director need exert.
I usually think about a play anywhere from six months to a year and a half before I sit down to write it out.
I’m infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life.
The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.
Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
Sincerity doesn't mean anything. A person can be sincere and be more destructive than a person who is insincere.
When one controls form, one doesn't do it with a stopwatch or a graph. One does it by sensing, again intuitively.
The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
My exposure to Beckett and to late O'Neill was probably important right at the time I gave up poetry and the novel.
The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.
Well, when I was six years old I decided, not that I was going to be, but with my usual modesty, that I was a writer.
It's the function of a playwright to write. Some playwrights write a large number of plays, some write a small number.
I don't like the climate in which writers have to work in the USA and I think it's my responsibility to talk about it.
A lot of people are confused by "hello." A lot of people are confused by a lot of things they shouldn't be confused by.
As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.
I think that's foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don't know anything about themselves.
If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.
I don't feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.
I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.
Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.
There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.
Im not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, Im rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.
You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?
Anything you put in a play -- any speech -- has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.
Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.
One has always got to be terribly careful, since the theater is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas, not to let the distortions occur.
The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.
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.
I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.