John Patrick Shanley Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn't believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented.”

“You have to live in order to have something to write about - you get caught up in moviemaking and celebrities and money, and it's very intoxicating, but it doesn't give you what you need as a writer. You have to do something else for that.”

“Women consume, and they must be directed what to consume, or they may identify you as lunch.”

“Back when you were doing plays like 'The Miracle Worker,' you had 20, 25 people in the cast. When you go to make the film, that's not such a stretch. But when you're doing plays like 'Proof,' it's just five people or something in the thing, and it gets to be a really difficult re-conception.”

“I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.”

“I did 'Doubt' as a film, a play and an opera.”

“I would say that my parents were intermittently proud of me. They couldn't hang onto it, you know? It would come and go, like the flu.”

“It wasn't until I was 35 or 36, when I wrote 'Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,' that I began to get some notoriety, though I only made $5,000.”

“'The Miracle Worker' is just such an incredibly powerful play on stage, and is so kinetic, and athletic.”

“The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.”