Howard Fast Quotes

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

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

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.

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

I always have something big enough to say as a playwright. It's storytelling.

Normally, you spend the play convincing people of the world and the characters.

Where film can eat up story, theatre needs space and breath.

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

I'm a dramatist.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

I always wanted to tell stories and act.

If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.

All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

If I can't find real situations that interest me in real life, then I'll go and write them in play form.

I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director. So most of my songs come in a play form, you know, where there are characters and stories, so I like to go beyond just the song sometimes.

No matter how good you might be in a movie, you'll never be any better. But in a play, I can be better next Tuesday. That's the thrill of it.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

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

Plays were really my last option. The reason I didn't write plays initially was because I thought theatre was the worst of all the art forms.

I would like to write a play.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.