Tracy Letts Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“I try to write fun - though difficult and challenging - things for actors to do, because I know if they're having fun, they're going to give it everything they got.”

“I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.”

“Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'm quite sure that any of the actors who did the original production of 'August' could have done the film of 'August.' I don't think any of them were particularly surprised when they didn't wind up doing the film.”

“When I write a play, and we read it for the first time, the great fear is that everybody is going to say, 'You're a bum and you can't write. This stinks.' and throw the script in the garbage. The great hope is that they're all going to lift me up on their shoulders and carry me to the streets, singing, 'He's a genius, he's a genius!'”

“I don't have a great face for camera.”

“I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies.”

“The way we tell our stories on stage is that we use spoken word to convey action, and in movies, we use visual images to convey action.”

“You don't work as hard to watch a movie. You work harder to watch a play, so what the audience puts into it is interesting.”

“'Killer Joe' was originally written in 1991 and first produced in '93 at the Next Theater's Lab - a 40 seat black box theater in Evanston, Illinois - back when I was getting started. I was just 25 and I had been acting for awhile, but it was my first play and the one that really got me noticed, especially by Steppenwolf.”

“I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.”