Playwrights Quotes

“Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?”
― Arthur Schnitzler

“Actors are all about entrances, but writers are all about exits.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“When you cannot love or hate anymore, then where is the charm of life?”
― Arthur Schnitzler

“That's what I love most about writers--they're such lousy actors.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can’t polish what you haven’t written.

Things that made for a normal life—like a daily routine that followed the sun—took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn’t a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep.

He would often awake with a new idea—as if he’d merely been on a break and not unconscious—and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot’s seat in a ship that could go anywhere.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“The gratitude of playwrights for actors is almost as rare as the reverse. Golden eggs have little time for the mucky feathers that cling to them.”
― John Osborne, Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise

“Most playwrights should observe the same constitutional rights as the Queen: to be consulted, to advise and to warn.”
― John Osborne, Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise

“So here it is: A month of heartbreaking, gut-wrenching work that, if we do it right, leads to no definite conclusion. Eighteen-hour days and eighteen-hour nights. For you new members, this will feel like some kind of endurance race.

We’ve got one month to break down this awful script, rebuild it, learn every one of its variations, and then rehearse the result until you can do it in your sleep.

But even then we won’t be finished, because there’s a hostile crowd out there just dying to be the first ones to solve the mystery—which we will not let them do.

Let’s get to work.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“We are playwrights scripting our personal reality show and enigmatic fantasy world. Without a questing protagonist and a strong antagonist, the plot is tepid. All heroic conduct requires a journey filled with hardship, adventure, and a personal nemesis to conquer.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“If I could rewrite the ending of any Shakespeare play, it would definitely be the finale of Romeo and Juliet. That dénouement just seems so far-fetched, over-complicated, and forced into a tragedy. It would have worked much better with a happier ending. While it is realistic that young lovers might take their own lives because of relentless interference and persecution, the Tragic Ex Machina (a sudden, unearned disastrous intervention) mechanism chosen was neither believable nor apt. The Bard perfected the character-driven tragic architecture later in Hamlet and King Lear.”
― Stewart Stafford