Kenneth Cranham Quotes

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

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.

David Mamet's writing is pretty spectacular, obviously. I like the honesty of it; I like how funny it is and how sad it is.

I've always looked to that play, 'Virginia Woolf,' for a cue - as far as any cue I might need as an actor for inspiration or as a writer.

I am really not of the school of naturalism. I like style, and you can use more style in theater than in film roles. I love to sink my teeth into a part.

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.

A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.

I fell in love with acting. I thought, 'This is what I want to do.'

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.

On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters - words have to be used to express that, and I love that about theater.

I would love to be remembered as one of the greatest Lears or Hamlets.

There's a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning.

One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have wanted to translate it. There are no one-liners. It's much more a truthful comedy than a play of dazzling wit.

I love plays that have musical moments. I'm not a big fan of musicals per se, but I love straight plays that have musical edges to them. I don't know if I will ever be able to structure a musical, but 'Finer Noble Gases' is as close as I've gotten.

I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke.

My brother Trevor is theatrically trained. I used to watch him when I was younger and I was in love with it. It just seemed really fun to be someone else. So I begged my mom; she was hesitant, but she eventually allowed me. And it turned out well, I guess.

The more cerebral, slightly darker comedy stuff is where I love to live.

I just love acting.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.

My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.

There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.

I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who recognise that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

I think the reason I'm an actress is because I love playing kind of a more extreme people.

A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel.