Quotes by Playwrights

Courage is the lovely virtue-the rib of Himself that God sent down to His children.
J.M. Barrie
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul.
Oscar Wilde
I'll remember your apocalypse if you'll remember mineIt will be a holiday of the senses
Eric Gamalinda
What is about to happen is not the reclaiming of Earth by a triumphant Mother Nature, a karmic repudiation of humanity's arrogant ill stewardship. Nothing we ever did mattered one way or another. This event has always been in the cards for man's planet, for the whole scope of our history, coming regardless of what we did or didn't do.
Ben H. Winters
Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie.
Cormac McCarthy
Should the whole frame of nature round him break,In ruin and confusion hurled,He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,And stand secure amidst a falling world.
Joseph Addison
…So when the last and dreadful hourThis crumbling pageant shall devour,The trumpet shall be heard on high,The dead shall live, the living die,And Music shall untune the sky
John Dryden
Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.
Anton Chekhov
Many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing.
William Shakespeare
RUMOUR:"Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,The which in every language I pronounce,Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
William Shakespeare
Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Rumour is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjecturesAnd of so easy and so plain a stopThat the blunt monster with uncounted heads,The still-discordant wavering multitude,Can play upon it.
William Shakespeare
Enter RUMOUR, painted full of ton
William Shakespeare
If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Oscar Wilde
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
Oscar Wilde
He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.
Ben Jonson
He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament
Daphne du Maurier
I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities.
Jeff Lindsay
She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy gray and holding communion only with the birds and trees; a life of retirement away from the vain world; a life into which no man came. It had its attractions, but she decided that gray did not suit her.
A.A. Milne
On my solemn oath, Edmund, I'd gladly face not having an acre of land to call my own, nor a penny in the bank, I'd be willing to have no home but the poorhouse in my old age, if I could look back now on having been the fine artist I might have been.
Eugene O'Neill
Personally of course I regret everything.Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need,not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy,not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust,not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear,not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly.An ordure, from beginning to end.
Samuel Beckett
You were what you were and you are what you are. Fuck that regrets bullshit.
Irvine Welsh
But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me
Oscar Wilde
If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memoires!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.
Honoré de Balzac
Paris has always seemed ... the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please.
Natalie Clifford Barney
For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can't paint in Paris, you'd better give up and marry the boss's daughter.
Alan Jay Lerner
We'll always have Paris.
Howard Koch
When good Americans die, they go to Paris.
Oscar Wilde
I'm saying the American way is to overcome, to conquer, to come out on top. And we do it by spending and eating and screwing our women harder than anyone else. That's all I'm saying.
Neil LaBute
The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.
Howard Zinn
The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.
Howard Zinn
The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
If someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me - and I long to mention it myself. I start subjects leading up to it, and then I feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak to him again - and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it!
Dodie Smith
I really admired Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, but my form of activism would have to be the written word, not the empty stomach. My parents had brought my family t the United States because of the fear of empty stomachs.
Josefina López
You never do any good until you get into some trouble.
Arthur Miller
If you join the rat race — you're in the race of rats.
Bertolt Brecht
Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes." ~ ' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes." -
Clare Boothe Luce
In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language.
Anton Chekhov
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
George Bernard Shaw
I never really feel that I’m stuck. I actually think that people are never stuck, there’s no such thing as writers block, I think that theres terror that can silence you. But if you can think of it as a dynamic thing I mean a writers block, it’s a paralysis an immobility and the thing that has immobilized you is a very powerful force. Immobility is itself an act, it’s a choice. It can sometimes take as much energy to remain immobile as it does to be mobile. And if you think of it in a dynamic way then it’d freeze you from the sense that at some point your talent will simply abandon you and you’re just a vacant shell with nothing to say, I don’t think that ever really happens. But I think that terror, bad experience, trauma and so on can absolutely silence you.
Tony Kushner
c.t“So, hunny, don’t waste your time trying to label or define me…’cause I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.
George C. Wolfe
If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.
Sarah Ruhl
Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.
Sarah Ruhl
I hate parties.And a wedding is the biggest party of all.All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower.He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them.Then I have to greet them.A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.
Sarah Ruhl
Better a humble heart, a lowly life. Untouched by greatness let me live - and live. Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.
Euripides
In childbirth grief begins.
Euripides
Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll.
Euripides
Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.
Euripides
Old loves are dropped when new ones come
Euripides
Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.
Euripides
How can I get up everyday knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive and I couldn't do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie?
Marsha Norman
Mama:...you can keep trying. You can get brave and try some more. You don't have to give up.Jessie: I'm NOT giving up. This IS the other thing I'm trying. And I'm sure there are some other things that might work, but MIGHT work isn't good enough any more. I need something that WILL work. THIS will work. That's why I picked it.
Marsha Norman
Mama: But something might happen. Something that might change everything. Who knows what it might be, but it might be worth waiting for! (Jessie doesn't respond.) Try if for two more weeks.Jessie: No, MamaMama: i'll pay more attention to you. Tell the truth when you ask me. Let you have your say.Jessie: No, Mama. This is how I have my say. This is how I say what I thought about it ALL and I say No. To Dawson and Loretta and the Red Chinese and epilepsy and Ricky and Cicel and you. And me. And hope. I say No.,
Marsha Norman
Cascando"why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you
Samuel Beckett
Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
Oscar Wilde
Or was he saying, "Hi! Wanna play?"And I did. Of course I did.
Jeff Lindsay
I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
William Congreve