The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.
Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ’concern for commercial viability.
Every fear hides a wish.
You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.
I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.
I’ve always been fascinated by the picaresque.
A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.
It’s hard to write a good play because it’s hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.
I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won’t ever do e-mail.
There’s nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won’t ring from room service; your mother won’t be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you’re dead.
Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one’s self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction – the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one’s own beliefs. It’s total freedom.
I love working on a typewriter – the rhythm, the sound; it’s like playing the piano, which I do, too.
If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we’re all going to be back in the breadline.
Marijuana, for example, won’t help one determine the correct aspect ratio...
A novel it’s different. It’s kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you’re dead.
I’m afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead.
Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.