Archive for the ‘Playwright’ Category

January 15th, 2012 Author Types, Authors, Playwright, U No Comments »

Ugo Betti

The first temptation, upon meeting an old friend after many years, is always to – look the other way.
Ugo Betti

All of us are mad. If it weren’t for the fact every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn’t be any point in giving each person a separate name.
Ugo Betti

This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It’s almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.
Ugo Betti

Memories are like stones, time and distance erode them like acid.
Ugo Betti

I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.
Ugo Betti

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.
Ugo Betti

If we have anything kind to say, any tender sentiment to express, we feel a sense of shame.
Ugo Betti

‘Mad’ is a term we use to describe a man who is obsessed with one idea and nothing else.
Ugo Betti

There is no forgiveness in nature.
Ugo Betti

Murderers, in general, are people who are consistent, people who are obsessed with one idea and nothing else.
Ugo Betti

December 27th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, Playwright, T No Comments »

Tristan Bernard

To live happily with other people, ask of them only what they can give.
Tristan Bernard

In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised – but by things that they expect.
Tristan Bernard

 

December 20th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, C, Playwright No Comments »

Cyrano de Bergerac

I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone.
Cyrano de Bergerac

A kiss is a rosy dot over the ‘i’ of loving.
Cyrano de Bergerac

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.
Cyrano de Bergerac

A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man.
Cyrano de Bergerac

 

May 13th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, Playwright, S No Comments »

Samuel Beckett

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
Samuel Beckett

Habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
Samuel Beckett

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett

Birth was the death of him.
Samuel Beckett

Do we mean love, when we say love?
Samuel Beckett

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.
Samuel Beckett

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Samuel Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.
Samuel Beckett

Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
Samuel Beckett

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
Samuel Beckett

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.
Samuel Beckett

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.
Samuel Beckett

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.
Samuel Beckett

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
Samuel Beckett

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Samuel Beckett

That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.
Samuel Beckett

You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.
Samuel Beckett

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.
Samuel Beckett

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Samuel Beckett

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile… a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
Samuel Beckett

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.
Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

May 10th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, D, Playwright No Comments »

David Belasco

Boxing is show-business with blood.
David Belasco

May 4th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, F, Playwright No Comments »

Francis Beaumont

The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much.
Francis Beaumont

Let no man fear \to die, we love to sleep all, and death is but the sounder sleep.
Francis Beaumont

There is a method in man’s wickedness; it grows up by degrees.
Francis Beaumont

You are no better than you should be.
Francis Beaumont

But what is past my help is past my care.
Francis Beaumont

Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.
Francis Beaumont

Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven.
Francis Beaumont

Interest makes some people blind, and others quick-sighted.
Francis Beaumont

Bad’s the best of us.
Francis Beaumont

It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
Francis Beaumont

Kiss till the cow comes home.
Francis Beaumont

Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Francis Beaumont

Oh, love will make a dog howl in rhyme.
Francis Beaumont

April 6th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, J, Playwright No Comments »

James M. Barrie

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
James M. Barrie

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
James M. Barrie

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
James M. Barrie

Everytime a child says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’ there is a a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
James M. Barrie

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.
James M. Barrie

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
James M. Barrie

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
James M. Barrie

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.
James M. Barrie

I am not young enough to know everything.
James M. Barrie

A woman can be anything the man who loves her would have her be.
James M. Barrie

Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
James M. Barrie

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
James M. Barrie

Always be a little kinder than necessary.
James M. Barrie

Ambition – it is the last infirmity of noble minds.
James M. Barrie

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!
James M. Barrie

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.
James M. Barrie

To die will be an awfully big adventure.
James M. Barrie

Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that.
James M. Barrie

I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.
James M. Barrie

Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.
James M. Barrie

Temper is a weapon that we hold by the blade.
James M. Barrie

We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
James M. Barrie

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
James M. Barrie

That is ever the way. ‘Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.
James M. Barrie

We are all of us failures, at least, the best of us are.
James M. Barrie

I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
James M. Barrie

It is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.
James M. Barrie

Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow.
James M. Barrie

The best place a person can die, is where they die for others.
James M. Barrie

April 1st, 2011 Author Types, Authors, H, Playwright No Comments »

Howard Barker

I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre.
Howard Barker

I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not, however, value them.
Howard Barker

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.
Howard Barker

I never ‘say’ anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being ‘said’.
Howard Barker

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.
Howard Barker

We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.
Howard Barker

March 28th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, P, Playwright No Comments »

Peter Barnes

There is zero debate about whether the world is getting warmer. That is a fact, a measured fact. There is some debate, although not much anymore, about what’s causing the world to get warmer. And the consensus, by far is that it’s us.
Peter Barnes

December 21st, 2010 Author Types, Authors, M, Playwright No Comments »

Maxwell Anderson

There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, till all men walk on higher ground in that lifetime.
Maxwell Anderson

He was a god, such as men might be, if men were gods.
Maxwell Anderson

This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.
Maxwell Anderson

If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it; it will make you a person in your own right.
Maxwell Anderson

The essence of a tragedy, or even of a serious play, is the spiritual awakening, or regeneration, of the hero.
Maxwell Anderson