American Playwright Quotes

Lovers are Like walking ghosts, they always haunt the spot Of their misdeeds.

George Henry Boker

No hate has ever unlocked the myriad interlacings—the front of love. Hate is nothing.

As a breath on glass, - As witch-fires that burn, The gods and monsters pass, Are dust, and return.

George Sterling

There oughta be a woman can break down
Sit down, break down, sit down.

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.

Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity.

Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.

You coulda been a singer, Ma. Play Vegas. And I'd write ya spicy songs to slither out of your throat like barracudas.

Summertime
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin',
And the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich,
And your ma is good lookin';
So hush, little baby,
Don' yo' cry.

That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

I regard the theater as the greatest of all art-forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Thornton Wilder

Order, cleanliness, seemliness make a structure that is half support, half ritual, and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

Tennessee Williams

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

Our lives are not totally random. We make commitments, we cause things to happen.

Wendy Wasserstein

Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.

The time to make your mind up about people, is never.

These days it's hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.

Our universe is ruled by random whim, inhabited by people who laugh at logic.

Jeff Lindsay (writer)

I've almost come to feel that it doesn't make much difference what you believe in — the thing that's important is a state of belief. It's much better to believe in nonsense than in nothing.

Margaret Ayer Barnes

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars.

As a writer, I have always considered it my job to describe the world as I know it; to struggle toward whatever portion of the truth is available to me,

Poetry is road maintenance for a fragmented world which seeks to be kept together. It's been an integral activity for a long time.

MASH] was going to have to be a whole lot more than funny. Funny was easy. How not to trivialize human suffering by trying to be comic about it, that was the challenge.

Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility - both of which are critical in the world today. There is so much that we don't know, and so much that we know we don't know. To be overly confident or without doubt seems silly to me. Determination, on the other hand, is a commitment to win, a commitment to fight the good fight.

Anna Deavere Smith