Playwright Quotes · Page 5

I think in theater the playwright is king. Those words are unchangeable. They are the reason that everything else flows from.

— Greta Gerwig

I'm on Twitter every single week. It's sort of like being a playwright standing in the back of the theater.

— Peter Paige

I think that's foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don't know anything about themselves.

— Edward Albee

Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got there before we got there.

— Tom Stoppard

My first acting class was taught by a little known playwright, David Mamet, who then cast me in my first play, opposite…

— John Mahoney

I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.

— Libba Bray

Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

— August Strindberg

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

— Alex Cox

“Damn everything but the circus!. . .The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop…

— E.E. Cummings

I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that…

— Tony Kushner

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in…

— Orson Welles

The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented…

— Bob Mondello

I love television, and my love for it has made me curious about writing it. It feels like television's moving toward something…

— Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Any actor worth his salt is looking for truth, the core of truth of the particular situation he is portraying, of that…

— Jason Robards

In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in…

— Robertson Davies

Man is not himself only...He is all that he sees; all that flows to him from a thousand sources...He is the land,…

— Mary Hunter Austin

In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a…

— Vincent Canby

I did a thing called 24 Hour Plays, a thing they do every year on Broadway. A bunch of playwrights and actors…

— Scott Raab

Theater is about interpretation and what an actor and what a director brings to a piece too. I'm open to it every…

— Nilo Cruz

Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness…

— George Bernard Shaw

Neil [Simon] was considered our greatest [living playwright] at the time [of their marriage]. Maybe he still is; I don't know. But…

— Marsha Mason

People ask me when I decided to become a playwright, and I tell them I decide to do it every day. Most…

— Suzan-Lori Parks

I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as…

— Anonymous

“If you meant to invite me, and let's proceed from that assumption, then you wanted a playwright, and I have to say…

— in a commencement speech to Vassar College Tony Kushner

I'm not a poet. I wish I was a poet but I'm not. I'm a playwright. And so I have a different…

— Tony Kushner

I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain…

— Edward Albee

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

— Edward Albee

A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay.

— Arthur Miller

Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society. The greatest playwrights are moralists.

— Yasmina Reza

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

— Timothy West

The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.

— Timothy West

One is just an interpreter of what the playwright thinks, and therefore the greater the playwright, the more satisfying it is to…

— Vivien Leigh

If a playwright is funny, the English look for a serious message, and if he's serious, they look for a joke.

— Sacha Guitry

I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in…

— John Patrick Shanley

Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our…

— Janet Malcolm

I'm lucky enough to say my day job is acting. I cut my teeth as a theater actor and playwright in New…

— Christopher Denham

“The famous playwright once said, "To sleep, perchance to dream." But I say, "Why wait until we're asleep?”

— D. L. Silverman

I want to be a playwright the way people are bank tellers. I want to keep doing it and have it go…

— Richard Greenberg

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

— William Goldman

The economics of being a playwright are abysmal. I like to think of the work I do out in Hollywood as a…

— Beau Willimon