David Henry Hwang Quotes

It's hard to find a play that's right for me to do. Rather than waiting around for the right script to come along, I decided to write one myself.

I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.

I just want to make good films on my own wherever I can.

I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

I'd like to be able to be like a director, like Richard Brooks, say. And be able to say, 'I did my best, and this is it, and there's nobody to blame but me.'

Photography is a pursuit that allows you to be very hands-on with what you show people of either yourself or the art you want to make, and acting is kind of the exact opposite. You do have a modicum of creative freedom as an actor, but you're still very much a cipher for other people's art.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

I'm trying to do the kind of projects that I want to see in the theatre.

The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?

Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.

Stage performing is a dying art form.

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

But if I really want to produce my own work and tell stories, then I will.

I'm an actor, not a writer. I'd be pretty annoyed if the writers tried to come in and hang over my shoulder telling me how to act, so I don't go in and tell them how to write.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

I have the most fun writing and directing. And I always choose myself as the lead actor.

With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.

I enjoy the acting, but I didn't plan on that. It fell into my lap, and I'm having a lot of fun with it, but I'm definitely moving towards directing because I'm naturally a writer, and I think a good director edits, writes, and has acted a little bit. He's done a little bit of everything, and that's what I'm trying to do.

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.

My role is to just tell the highest degree of truth with every character and every story. From there, I have no clue whatsoever how things are going to turn out.

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I have ever wanted to do.

I started writing because it was hard to find acting jobs. I didn't like any monologues in auditions, so I started to write my own things. Since then, I have written a couple of shows. I was nominated for playwright of the year for a play I wrote called 'Potential Space.'