John Mortimer Quotes

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

To be able to write a play a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gullible, passionate; he must be something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a damn fool.

A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

I would like to write a play.

The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together.

I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.

I have a certain kind of a taste for what will make a good movie or a good play or theater.

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.

I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitched - the scene, the line, the word - at the exact point where the audience has just the right amount of information. It's like Occam's razor.

I love a really good storyline.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays.

The one overall structure in my plays is language.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.

If it's a drama or comedy, it doesn't matter to me. I just want to like the writing.

Dramatic shows are the ones that I am attracted to.

Like any compelling show on television, what works best in WWE is relationships. What's the relationship between these two people, and how does the conflict manifest itself into box office?

There's a real art to telling a story in two hours, and that will always be something that people are very, very interested in.

Drama sells.

Nothing is more theater-based than wrestling. It's Greek-tragedy-level theater.

People don't come to the theatres to watch a kiss. It's the story that appeals to them.

Streetcar is a most wonderful, wonderful play.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.