“ Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. ”
- Henry Jacobsen- Copy
- 2.8K
“ The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them. ”
- Eugene Ionesco- Copy
- 2.3K
“ Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality. ”
- Eugene Ionesco- Copy
- 3.2K
“ The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH — which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied — prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done. ”
- David Mamet- Copy
- 1.9K
“ Quite often I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved — equally as often — quite wrong. ”
- Harold Pinter- Copy
- 3.6K
“ 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. ”
- Edward Albee- Copy
- 1.1K
“ Well, one of the things I discovered in the course of looking back and writing about what I saw in my memory is that I was a closely observant person long before I became a reporter. ”
- Alma Guillermoprieto- Copy
- 1.3K
“ I can sum up none of my plays. I can describe none of them, except to say: That is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did. ”
- Harold Pinter- Copy
- 1.2K
“ The stage play is a trial not a deed of violence. The soul is opened, like the combination of a safe, by means of a word. You don't require an acetylene torch. ”
- Jean Giraudoux- Copy
- 3K
“ Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer. ”
- Henry Jacobsen- Copy
- 1.8K
“ A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good. ”
- T. S. Eliot- Copy
- 2.2K
“ Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. ”
- Tennessee Williams- Copy
- 2.3K
“ If I write a new play, my point of view may be profoundly modified. I may be obliged to contradict myself and I may no longer know whether I still think what I think. ”
- Eugene Ionesco- Copy
- 866
“ One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives. ”
- Arthur Miller- Copy
- 3.3K
“ Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. ”
- Aristotle- Copy
- 372
“ One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions. ”
- Anton Chekhov- Copy
- 3.2K
“ "Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.". ”
- George Bernard Shaw- Copy
- 801
“ Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage. ”
- Edward Albee- Copy
- 958
“ I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself. ”
- Tennessee Williams- Copy
- 204
“ I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays. ”
- Graham Greene- Copy
- 484
“ I think that's foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don't know anything about themselves. ”
- Edward Albee- Copy
- 1.2K
“ In a play, from the beginning, you have to realize that you're preparing something which is going into the hands of other people, unknown at the time you're writing it. ”
- T. S. Eliot- Copy
- 3.2K
“ In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough, you'll probably come across something that will give you a key as to structure. I think the process of writing a play is working back and forth between the moment and the whole… ”
- David Mamet- Copy
- 1.8K
“ When I'm writing a play I hear it like music. I use the same indications that a composer does for duration. There's a difference, I tell my students, between a semi-colon and a period. A difference in duration. And we have all these wonderful things, we use commas and underlining and all the wonderful punctuation things we can use in the same way a composer uses them in music… ”
- Edward Albee- Copy
- 1.8K
“ I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do — then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night… ”
- Tennessee Williams- Copy
- 2.2K
“ Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences — I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together… ”
- Harold Pinter- Copy
- 115
“ Unless you are terribly, terribly careful, you run the danger — without even knowing it is happening to you — of slipping into the fatal error of reflecting the public taste instead of creating it. Your responsibility is to the public consciousness, not the public view of itself. ”
- Edward Albee- Copy
- 402
“ Everything influences playwrights. A playwright who isn't influenced is never of any use. He's the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. ”
- Arthur Miller- Copy
- 3.9K
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