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Quotes by Playwright
"I think people nowadays do tend to blame their parents for everything."
41
"Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity."
41
"Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up."
41
"Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element."
41
"Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss."
Hell,
41
"A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced."
41
"I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all."
41
"The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages."
40
"Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time."
40
"You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible."
40
"After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?"
40
"The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play."
40
"First there was the theatre of people and animals, then of people and the devil. Now we need the theatre of people and people."
40
"Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path."
40
"But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man."
40
"What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed."
40
"For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else."
40
"The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted."
40
"Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone."
40
"That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed."
Play,
40
"There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible."
40
"Since I also act, sometimes I get over my resentment and commit to the pitch as an acting job."
40
"I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp."
40
"If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless."
40
"Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance."
40
"Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?"
Life,
40
"Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue."
40
"When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it."
40
"People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything."
40
"Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it."
40
"Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author."
40
"Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again."
40
"That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together."
40
"We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries."
40
"It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change."
40
"He had been frightened and so he had been vehement."
40
"Early to bed and early to rise is a bad rule for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with our most prominent and influential people."
40
"You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me."
40
"Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition."
40
"The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one."
40
"I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money."
40
"I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again."
40
"Beauty is an ecstacy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it."
40
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