Marsha Norman Quotes

21 quotes in 297 categories

• There are things that music can do that language could never do, that painting could never do, or sculpture. Music is capable of going directly…
• We are not afraid to look under the bed, or to wash the sheets; we know that life is messy. We know that somebody has…
• Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.
• I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.
• Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
• People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.
• 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,…
• I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt.…
• Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it’s hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than…
• No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like…
• Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.
• Success is always something that you have to recover from.
• I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.
• There are days when I think the National Endowment for the Arts should issue a quota system for the production of plays by women -…
• If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.
• I feel that I speak the musical language.
• People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing…
• At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.
• Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.

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