Robert E. Sherwood Quotes

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

Now I can't wait to write my next play.

I would like to write a play.

Fiction is organized gossip.

Storytelling, in print or speech, needs vital energy.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I'm not a playwright.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

In my free time, I'd written 'Sammy's Hill' - it had started out as a play. I just did it for myself.

What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.

The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

The goal, first and foremost, is to tell a satisfying - entertaining - story.

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

It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.

When theatre works, it's like nothing else, and when it doesn't, which is often, it's excruciating. It's perhaps not so excruciating when a novel goes wrong, but there is a kind of magic that can and should happen.

The hardest thing is to write a play, because you have to hold their attention for two hours, and if you let them go for five minutes, they're gone for good.

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.

Everything I do is just an opportunity to tell a great story.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.