"In the two or three months that it takes me to write a play, I find that the reality of the play is a great deal more alive for me than what passes for reality."
Sphere: Related Content"I think it can be dangerous for young writers to be modest when they're young. I've known a number of truly talented writers who did less than they could have done because they weren't vain and unpleasant enough about their talent. You have to take it seriously."
Sphere: Related Content"Not all writers are artists. But all of us like the idea of somebody in the year 2283 blowing the dust off one of our books, thumbing through it and exclaiming, "Hey, listen to what this old guy had to say back in the twentieth century!"
Sphere: Related ContentI think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
Sphere: Related ContentA work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
Sphere: Related ContentI had hoped to do a full month of these daily quotes, but time is pressing, so they will appear, um, whenever. I do like this one, though:
One ought to write only when one leaves a piece of one's flesh in the inkpot each time one dips one's pen.
I wrote about old people long before I was anything like as old as that, because I didn't know about them. I still write out of an enormous sense of curiosity. As I get older, I write more about children, because I've forgotten what it's like to be a child.
Sphere: Related ContentI made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.
Sphere: Related ContentWriting is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
Sphere: Related ContentYou can't wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.
Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.
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It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
From The Difficulty of Being:
The ability to burst out laughing is proof of a fine character. I mistrust those who avoid laughter and refuse its overtures. They are afraid to shake the tree, mindful of the fruits and birds, afraid that someone might notice that nothing comes off their branches.
Like the heart and like sex, laughter functions by erection. Nothing swells it that does not excite it. It does not rise of its own accord.
I love this quote:
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.
Sphere: Related ContentAct One takes the reader through Moss Hart's long, long struggle to reach success in the theatre. Here is the scene he describes at the end of the book, on the morning after the opening -- and tumultous rave reviews given to -- Once in a Lifetime, the first of his indelible creations co-written with George S. Kaufman. Suddenly, he would be a nobody -- and dirt-poor -- no more:
"....Even through the rain-splashed windows of the cab, I could see a long double line of people extending the full length of the lobby from the box office. The line spilled out under the marquee where another line was patiently forming under umbrellas. I got out of the cab and walked into the lobby and stood gaping at all the people. It was not yet half-past nine in the morning. How long I stood there, forgetful of everything else but the wonder of that line, I do not know, but the box-office man, looking up for a moment to glance across the lobby, caught sight of me and smiled. There is no smile as bright as the smile of a box-office man the morning after a hit. It flashes with the iridescence of stage jewelry under spotlights and is as wide as the proscenium itself. His smile did not waver -- it grew more brilliant as the telephones jangled behind him and visions of ticket speculators, like sugar plums, danced across his mind. He waved me over to the head of the line and stuck his hand out through the opening in the grille to shake my own.
'A year at least,' he said. 'It's the hottest ticket in town.'
....I doubled the bills in my fist and walked out and into the taxi. Without a word I went through the pretense of counting the money, thoroughly aware of the awed silence around me.
'When,' my brother said quietly, 'do they change the name of the theatre to the Money Box?'"
