Quotessence
Home / Authors / Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner Quotes

Playwright

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingPeopleThinkingIfsPlayAngels In AmericaKindTheaterWayKnowsPlaywrightWorldArtistFeelsShouldDramaFilmMeanTony KushnerAmerica

Famous Tony Kushner Quotes

“I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't get published by real publishers at this point, or have to go through two years of trying after writing a novel that's taken them five or six years and simply can't get the thing in print. Or it gets in print and it doesn't get reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and disappears without a trace. I mean, it's terrifying. I don't know how anybody can stand it. It's such an enormous amount of work and the economics of it are really quite brutal.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantWritingTryingYearsMeanTwoBookRealNamesNovelKnow HowTakenFiveNew YorkAmountSixEconomicsMadDisappearSignificantEnormousNovelistsTwo YearsPrintReviewsBrutalPublishersNew York TimesBook ReviewWithout A Trace
Author:Tony Kushner
Create image

“If you're a playwright, unless you're really lacking in get-up-and-go, you can always get your play up somewhere. You can't necessarily make a living doing it, but theater is about meeting an audience. Plays are not easier to write necessarily, they take less time to write. If you get them up, it's a much more rough-and-tumble kind of existence. I think it's, from my perspective, easier than novel writing.”

IfsThinkingWritingKindPlayExistenceNovelAudiencePerspectiveEasierTheaterMeetingsGet UpRoughLackingPlaywrightNovel Writing
Author:Tony Kushner
Create image

“Being on a film set is like being in tech forever. In theater, when you finally finish rehearsing, you go onstage and you do the lights and the sets and you make the machine of the production work. It takes usually about ten days in the theater, two or three weeks if it's a really big musical. I mean, it's hell on earth. You just sit around forever while they adjust the lights. And every playwright with half a brain runs for the hills when tech starts because it's so boring, and you don't want to talk to the director because the director is running this giant machine.”

IfsWantMeanTwoBigsLightRunningEarthFilmThreeBrainHalfHellForeverWeekDirectorsTenMachinesTheaterMusicalProductionsBoringHillsGiantsWorking ItPlaywrightHell On EarthFilm SetRehearsingSo Boring
Author:Tony Kushner
Create image

“But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic.”

IfsWayStillsPlayLove IsHumourMajorsLogicBasesRationalConfusedSpectacularIrresistibleEcstaticBarbaraPolemicsGood Humour
Author:Tony Kushner
Create image

“I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.'”

IfsThinkingMindArtMy OwnFictionOpinionWatchesHistoricalSeriesComplexityWorks Of ArtHistorical FictionGood WorkRichnessBotheredEmbeddedDelivering
Author:Tony Kushner
Create image

“I just wondered what a thing it would be...if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free. It would be...heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and... Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unemcumbered, into the morning.”

IfsWould BeJusticeWalksMorningGoneTerribleSkinsTerrorShedHeartlessGone Away
Book:Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition
Create image