Martin McDonagh Quotes

I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.

I think everyone's intentions are to become a performer at first. But by the time I was in high school and college, I discovered that I liked writing and that I was probably a little better at it.

I never wanted to be a playwright.

I'm just attracted to good material and great characters and that can come in any form, whether it's television or film or a theatre piece.

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

I am grateful to theatre for making me what I am today. But it's not like theatre is my first love. I am equally attached to cinema, which is, actually, a child of theatre, since it borrows heavily from it.

Film is where I want to end up, but I don't want to let go of theatre.

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.'

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.

I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

I'm constantly involved in theater, looking at theater, trying to do work in theater, support theater. And that's kind of my creative passion.

As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.

My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.

Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it.

I'm working with theatre-makers who are the top of their game, and it's extraordinary.

I am trying to write a play that is big and I feel represents me - that's my big ambition.

I went to drama school for three years, and the whole thing there is that hopefully you are introduced to a man called William Shakespeare who is the greatest of all time of all storytelling.

I love film and TV, the medium of them, just because it's such a smaller screen. It's much more precise. Ideally, I'd like to do maybe a film a year of some sort and use that to work more in the theatre because theatre really is my first love.

I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.

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

With the theatre, for God's sake, everything makes sense. You create a clear sequential reality for a specific audience at one particular time.

I took a lot of time off after Mobsters and although I did something I had never done before, which was to direct a play, The Laughter Epidemic, it felt like a vacation.

Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.