Peter Shaffer Quotes

'The Importance of Being Earnest' is important, but it says nothing about anything.

Frankly, the British always looked at this as a dumpy industrial area, but this was where Shakespeare lived and wrote and performed some of his greatest works.

If you put on an Oscar Wilde [play], it will interest those who are interested in Oscar Wilde. But it won't interest anybody else, because they won't get that wit.

What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century

[Oscar Wilde's Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that's why I guess it's semi-autobiographical.

My first play, 'The Colored Museum,' was done in '86 at the Public Theater.

I did 'Prodigal Son' at Manhattan Theatre Club.

The Globe is a missing monument. There's no existing example of a theater from Shakespeare's time. You have Roman theaters, Greek theaters, all kinds of theaters, but none in which the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Marlowe were performed. Scholars feel that it would be of immense value to have one.

The Boston run of 'Lolita, My Love' ended after a mere nine performances - though one of them was recorded at decent enough quality to be preserved by the New York Public Library.

I came from the theatre. I would prefer to spend more time there.

I cannot imagine the type of sinister fiend who would be against the library. A library essentially says, 'Look, here is some free information that will enrich your life. Read it on your own time. I trust that you will bring it back when you are finished.' It might be the most civilized, forward-thinking institution in America. Perhaps the only one, in fact.

There's nothing compared to the history of writing about the city of New York that you get, say, in Charles Reznikoff.

When I was young, I wanted to be a dramatic writer, a writer of tragedy. Nothing would've pleased me more than if I could have written like Eugene O'Neil or Tennessee Williams.

There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.

A book brings its own history to the reader.

You don't expect me to know what to say about a play when I don't know who the author is, do you? . . . If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to reason.

Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.

The playbill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.

I have worked with Tarell Alvin McCraney, who is the play Moonlight is based on. He's a company member at Steppenwolf. I have done a could of his plays here.

The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.

Shakespeare has done far more for the world than the Bible.

Our contention has always been that Shakespeare is our greatest living author. If he can survive a season on Broadway, he must be.

Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world.

Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was extremely important to me.