Playwright Quotes

It's an odd mix, the life of a playwright.

I'm not a playwright.

It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright.

A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman.

I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?

The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

A conventional playwright tries to tell you more about the characters than they know about themselves.

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

I pray to be of service to the playwright, the audience, the other actors and my character.

You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by.

An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.

Necessarily, I'm always involved in casting, as any playwright is, because the whole process of putting on a play is a collaborative, organic effort on the part of a bunch of people trying to think alike.

Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

The mission of the playwright is to look in his heart and write, to write whatever concerns him at the moment; to write with passion and conviction. Of course the measure of the man will be the measure of the play.

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.

Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.