David Rabe Quotes

Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend. We were the ones that worked with Saddam Hussein. The United States worked with bin Laden.

I went in to play the most corrupt politician I could possibly think of [in "The Congressman"] and to do it with a certain kind of charm.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil."

Sex is God's joke on the human race ... if we didn't have sex to make us ridiculous, She would have had to think up something else instead.

When we're good, we're very, very good, and when we're bad, we're horrid. This is not news, because we're so much more inventive and we have two hands, the left and the right. That is how we think. It's all over our literature, and it's all over the way we arrange archetypes, the good version, the bad version, the god, the devil, the Abel, the Cain, you name it. We arrange things in pairs like that because we know about ourselves.

I think I've learned a lot about how to make movies, and particularly about how to edit movies by thinking about how similar problems are resolved in other forms. The issues in all forms are the same in an abstract sense, aren't they? Characterization, abstraction, metaphor, passage of time... Whether it's a movie, a novel, a play, or a poem, those issues exist. And each person resolves them differently.

It's only a hunting spider, it won't hurt you." -Myrnin "So not the point!" -Claire "Oh, pish. It's just another living creature. Nothing to be frightened of, if handled properly. I think I'll call him Bob. Bob the spider." -Myrnin "You're insane." -Claire

I watch people's behavior and notice things. I think that's why I became a comedian. I notice how stupid the things we do are.

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

Sex is pretty funny, let's face it. And the more seriously we take ourselves, the funnier sex gets, I think.

It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.

I wouldn't play the normal girl. I don't think that that's interesting or realistic, as far as how human beings really are.

I think that you only occasionally have to play evil because everything you're doing is.

I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.

Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.

If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.

Sometimes I like to think that characters you play are all the other people you could've been in a lifetime.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

I think insanity is the hardest thing to play.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

I don't think it's an ethical or moral issue, or even that people are stupid, but I do feel like as a culture things are out of balance, perverted, and inverted. Things that are ridiculous are worshipped, and things that are important are ridiculed. I think that's something worth thinking about.

Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons. I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you're gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don't believe that anymore.

I think if you read the story as bad guy turns good guy, then clearly it is a cliché. But my experience, when I spent three years working with young people in the townships on issues principally around HIV/AIDS, is that people are usually neither entirely good or bad. They are usually variations of both. Just because someone is a carjacker doesn't mean they are a ruthless cold-blooded murderer.

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.