Skylar Astin Quotes

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

I always have something big enough to say as a playwright. It's storytelling.

All you ever really want is a great character and great writing. As an actor, that's the juiciest sandwich you could ever ask for.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

I'm not a playwright.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

The play is a marvelous form, but it demands less than a novel.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I suppose I'm most influenced by any good, commercial writer. I learn from everyone.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.

A storyteller is basically what actors and writers are.

I advise all my novel students to write in the company of 'Veronica Mars.'

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.'

What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.

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

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.