Terence Rattigan Quotes

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.

The hardest thing is to write a play, because you have to hold their attention for two hours, and if you let them go for five minutes, they're gone for good.

The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience.

I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

Every time I go to the theater, there's something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can't get out of your system.

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

I'd love to go back and do theater. There's nothing like that instant response and the connection to a live audience.

I just did a play in New York which has been my best experience that I've had for maybe ever. It was Paul Weitz's play called Privilege and I was in New York for three months.

The most you play a character in the theater is, like, a couple months, and then you put it away.

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

I have, I think to do a play a year is very good if you can afford the time and the energy because it's difficult to do, it's really the actors medium of course, because you're really out there and nobody's yelling cut so, yeah I have.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I consider that my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt.

I feel like I know how to write plot.

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

I've always liked being on the performance end of it. I've come up with different ideas, but as far as being a creative writer, I'm not sure about that. I've always liked the performance end of it and wrestling, getting in the ring in front of a live crowd.

In theatre, I loved doing '2nd May 1997' at the Bush. Jack Thorne is a brilliant writer, and it was really exciting and felt new and different for me.

Drama sells.

I always struggle with making the technical aspects of the plot fit with the story that's unfolding in my imagination.

I've done theater most of my career, and I get to see the reaction of the audience right after the show.

I love working in theater because it's such a challenge to have the audience right there in front of you. If you mess up, you have to figure it out and keep going. There's no take two! I do hope to return to the stage someday. I really love to sing.

I have a certain kind of a taste for what will make a good movie or a good play or theater.