Quotes by Playwrights - Page 94

Give me, you said, on our very first night,the forest. I rose from the bed and went out,and when I returned, you listened, enthralled,to the shadowy story I told.Give me the river,you asked the next night, then I’ll love you forever.I slipped from your arms and was gone,and when I came back, you listened, at dawn,to the glittering story I told.Give me, you said, the goldfrom the sun. A third time, I got up and dressed,and when I came home, you sprawled on my breast,for the dazzling story I told.Give me,the hedgerows, give me the fields,I slid from the warmth of our sheets, and when I returned, to kiss you from sleep,you stirred at the story I told.give me the silvery cold,of the moon. I pulled on my boots and my coat,but when i came back, moonlight on your throatoutshone the story I toldGive me, you howledon our sixth night together, the wind in the trees.You turned to the wall as I left,and when I came home, I saw you were deafto the blustering story I told.Give me the sky, all the spaceit can hold. I left you, the last night we loved,and when I returned, you were gone with the gold,and the silver, the river, the forest, the fields,and this is the story I’ve told."Give
Carol Ann Duffy
I found the words at the back of a drawer,wrapped in black cloth, like three ringsslipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold,dull gold. I had held them before,years ago,then put them away, forgetting whatever it wasI could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,like a pledge, like a kiss,and my breathwarmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm –I love you, I love you, I love you –as though they were new."Finding the Words
Carol Ann Duffy
Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.We find an hour together, spend it not on flowersor wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hairlike treasure on the ground; the Midas lightturning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for herewe are millionaires, backhanding the nightso nothing dark will end our shining hour,no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spithung from the blade of grass at your ear,no chandelier or spotlight see you better litthan here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
Carol Ann Duffy
I tend the mobile nowlike an injured birdWe text, text, textour significant words.I re-read your first,your second, your third,look for your small xx,feeling absurd.The codes we sendarrive with a broken chord.I try to picture your hands,their image is blurred.Nothing my thumbs presswill ever be heard."Text
Carol Ann Duffy
Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Maxim's voice, clear and strong, "Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.
Daphne du Maurier
There was never an accident.Rebecca was not drowned at all. I killed her.I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove.I carried her body to the cabin, and took the boat out that night and sunk it there, where they found it today.It's Rebecca who's lying dead there on the cabin floor.Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?
Daphne du Maurier
She moves me not, or not removes at least affection's edge in me.
William Shakespeare
I held out my arms to him and he came to me like a child.
Daphne du Maurier
I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen.
Daphne du Maurier
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
William Shakespeare
What if the insane are too raw to know which stations are real and which are just confused static?
Kate Scelsa
Rose, this is Sebby," she said. "Sebby, Rose.""Oh yeah. Sebastian, right?" Rose said. "I've hard about you.""Only terrible things, I hope.""The worst.
Kate Scelsa
Bartender," she said to an invisible person, "a Jeremy special." She grabbed two plastic cups. "Coming right up," she replied to herself.The Jeremy special ended up being an elaborate mix of fruit juices and vodka, and wasn't half bad."i think you have a successful bartending career ahead of you," I said as we made our way into the living room."Later I'll make you the Sebby special," she said. "It's used to remove paint from cars.
Kate Scelsa
Wow," Mira said, looking around, "super fun.""When do they bring out the pig's blood and dump it on the head of the awkward girl with telekinetic powers?" Sebby asked."Not until ten, I think.""Well, what are we supposed to do until then? This was not well planned.
Kate Scelsa
Are you just hoping to see some boobs, Rose?" Sebby asked. "Is that what this is about?""Oh yeah," Rose said. "I've got a one-track mind and it's all about JV boobs.
Kate Scelsa
Look. Vegan, gluten-free quiche.""What exactly makes it quiche?""Well, the shape, I guess. It's quiche shaped.""Sounds great.""Your sarcasm is not appreciated.""Sounds gross.""Thank you. Honesty.
Kate Scelsa
I know you think that we saved you or something, Jeremy," he said. "That we were stronger than you. But we're not. We weren't. We're all just trying to survive however we can.
Kate Scelsa
And I love that all their overdone liberal bullshit totally backfired," he said. "Of course it did. People are assholes. End of story.""The world according to Sebastian Tate.""It's a philosophy that has gotten me far in life.
Kate Scelsa
I picked up the blue tube again, unscrewed the cap, and squeezed a perfect line of paint onto the palate. As soon as I brushed it on the canvas, I was responsible for it, for the inevitable imperfections. My world had always been like that paint, left on a palate. That color was a passive observer. But not it wanted to make something of itself. And I was terrified.
Kate Scelsa
In a really good thrift store you feel like you're in a room with all of these stories, and it's up to you to go and find the stories that you want to bring home with you. And then when you wear the clothes, they help you tell a new story, but they're bringing that old part with them and with you and you're benefiting from that in a way that you can't even really understand.
Kate Scelsa
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
Honoré de Balzac
The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge.
W Somerset Maugham
There was another thing bigger than the tiredness – and this was the strong crew purpose.
Carson McCullers
When failure is hard to take, pain becomes unbearable and you don’t see any way out. Hang on there, its darkest hour that indicates the advent of light.
Evan Smith
Without my voice and spirit I am dust. This is not what I want, but what I must.
Mike Bartlett
My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
T.S Eliot
A writer never takes a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing
Eugène Ionesco
Isn't it fun to work— or don't you ever do it? It's especially fun when your kind of work is the thing you'd rather do more than anything else in the world. I've been writing as fast as my pen would go every day this summer, and my only quarrel with life is that the days aren't long enough to write all the beautiful and valuable and entertaining thoughts I'm thinking. I've finished the second draft of my book and am going to begin the third tomorrow morning at half-past seven. It's the sweetest book you ever saw— it is, truly. I think of nothing else. I can barely wait in the morning to dress and eat before beginning; then I write and write and write till suddenly I'm so tired that I'm limp all over.
Jean Webster
This new book is going to get itself finished— and published! You see if it doesn't.
Jean Webster
Live by the words of intelligence endured..F@&$ IT!
William Shakespeare
Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
A.A. Milne
I don't believe it pays to be a great author.
Jean Webster
I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past.
Carson McCullers
He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her re lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.She had touched life, played with it a little, bit it was a slippery bugger,and finally we must close the door, and leave it behind.
Rachel Joyce
But seriously Holden, what is the island called now?”“Sentosa,” Holden said romantically and with a flourish of his unoccupied left hand.“Sentosa. Sounds romantic all right. So this is the progress you’re talking about?
Robert Yeo
Awake and asleep the novel is with you, dogging your footsteps. Strange formless bits of material float out from the ether about you and attach themselves to the main body of the story as though they had hung suspended in air for years, waiting.
Edna Ferber
Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
Ben Hecht
A good writer must be like the birds of a dark forest; you can’t see them, but you can hear their mysterious and wise voices!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy — the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.
William Saroyan
But, it didn’t matter that my mother suspected and knew that I was a writer. It was expected of me to take care of my share of the responsibility of making our way in the world as a family. In those days, also, it was unheard of, by us certainly, that to get any help, even from members of our own family, let alone from the government, which would have been disgraceful. Thank God that that kind of folly in thinking is obsolete. There is a temptation to feel, ‘Well, we all made it; why can’t these other poor people make it?’ And, of course, nothing is more than stupid than that attitude. I must confess that I find that attitude among many countrymen of my own who do find themselves taking undue pride in their own sense of ability — of being equal to any situation, and of seeing it through and improving it, and so on. And then, putting that against other people who don’t have that, and thereby implying that the other people are lazy. Not taking into account the whole different structure and identity and a people who have survived for centuries under very harsh conditions and members of a very great culture, and I am talking about the Indians, to begin with, in the Valley — the San Joaquin Valley, in Fresno, in Tulare, and the mountains, and there are many tribes of them, of different kinds, and I am talking about, also, the Mestizos, the mixtures of Mexican, Spaniards with Indians, making the Mexican. And I am talking about any minority which is considered by anybody as being innately of itself indolent. This kind of narrow thinking is a temptation to all sorts of people, and one has to be sympathetic with the people who are wrong, too, you see. It is not enough just to be sympathetic with the people who are belittled; it is necessary to be sympathetic with the people who belittle them. So, in worrying about the persecuted, one is obliged also to worry about the persecutors. I consider that a basic measure of growth.
William Saroyan
There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.
William Saroyan
Nothing makes you feel smaller than New York City...
Christy Hall
I've never been high. Writing is my drug of choice. You don't ever have to come down from that kind of high, I tell ya. And, best part is, it's free.
Christy Hall
My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job!
Christy Hall
There is no vacation for a writer! Every moment of his life is work!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Here are the Ten Commandments for a writer: Create, Create, Create, Create, Create, Create...
Mehmet Murat ildan
The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.
Gertrude Stein
Yet should there hover in their restless headsOne thought, one grace, one wonder at the least,Which into words no virtue can digest.
Christopher Marlowe
For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries—to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
Ben Jonson
For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life.
Cao Yu
No writer has an imaginative power richer than what the streets offer.
Mehmet Murat ildan
What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.
William Saroyan
Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.
Yukio Mishima
Nowadays 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
Emma Donoghue
The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.
Samuel Beckett
Be yourself. The world worships the original.
Jean Cocteau
I was always reaching for love, but it turns out love doesn't involve reaching. I was always dreaming of the big love, the ultimate love, the love that would sweep me off my feet or 'break open the hard shell of my lesser self' (Daisaku Ikeda). The love that would bring on my surrender. The love that would inspire me to give everything. As I lay there, it occurred to me that while I had been dreaming of this big love, this ultimate love, I had, without realizing it, been giving and receiving love for most of my life. As with the trees that were right in front of me, I had been unable to value what sustained me, fed me, and gave me pleasure. And as with the trees, I was so busy waiting for and imagining and reaching and dreaming and preparing for this huge big love that I had totally missed the beauty and perfection of the soft-boiled eggs and Bolivian quinoa.
Eve Ensler