Stephen Karam Quotes

All my work is partly biographical. I mean, 'Crash' was absolutely that, absolutely. But you just wouldn't recognize me in most of those characters. But I was in every single one of those characters in 'Crash,' because those were all fears that I had felt. Things that I had thought in my deepest, darkest heart.

A lot of interviewers are looking for the dark side. They want to know about the depths of your despair and fear.

I've always relied a lot on landscape in my books, the atmosphere of a particular place, as well as a fair amount of external action. While writing 'Chance,' it occurred to me that this is the most internal book I've ever written. So much of the action takes place in Chance's head.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

Yeah, at home it's all moonbeams and puppy-dog tails, so I guess I do have a darker side - and I like writing about it.

As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness.

A lot of my music is kind of contemplative, and somehow that always tends to tilt on the darker side. My inner conversation is apparently quite dark.

People ask me when I decided to become a playwright, and I tell them I decide to do it every day. Most days it's very hard because I'm frightened - not frightened of writing a bad play, although that happens often with me. I'm frightened of encountering the wilderness of my own spirit, which is always , no matter how many plays I write, a new and uncharted place. Every day when I sit down to write, I can't remember how it's done.

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.

I got really into writing plays. I did that for years and years and got some produced and didn't like it as much when I wasn't able to control it.

For me, I'm constantly writing stuff that is what I'm dealing with on a personal, psychological level. And I think that I bring that to whatever I'm doing, whether it's being an actor or a writer or whatever it is I'm doing. I think you can't help but do that.

GOOD AS NEW was born out of the idea of writing a play where the stakes were high and the collisions were of a verbal nature. Also I wanted to write a play where people were smarter than I was, and more alive than I feel normally. I became interested in the idea of characters who would surprise me. I guess one could argue that nothing comes out of you that wasn't within you to begin with, but maybe there are ways to trick yourself into becoming more an observer or an advocate for the characters.

Even if something within me is ugly, writing is a pretty good place to play with that thing and to begin to really see it.

As you write plays, you discover what you believe. And until you know what you believe, you can't write a play.

I feel that there are two kinds of writers. I feel that there are writers who are storytellers and then there are those just working out their obsessions. I think I'm a combination. I think, at least for these books, I'm going with fear. I've always been interested in fear. Fear is something I've dealt with in life, and I think it's the main motivating factor of everything, almost. From sex to politics.

Naturally, no writer who's any good at all would sit down and put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and start typing a play unless he knew what he was writing about.

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

The writer's life seethes within but not without.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

I'll always write about what's going on in my life and the reason for that is it's not actually because I'm so fascinated with myself, it's because I can't think. I can't think like have thoughts in my head and think them through and come to a conclusion. It's like math for me.

It's a little bit odd. The first time you do the play, you kind of throw yourself into it, trying to get the most out of all the individual moments. Then, a few hours later, you're still there, wondering what you could possibly do differently than what you just did a couple hours ago.

Some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I'm detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them.

You get attached to the way you write, and I'm attached to notebooks. That's where I really write the plays. Just two or three pages at a time, then I transfer to the typewriter and rewrite while I type.

Keeping a Diary all my life helped me to discover some basic elements essential to the vitality of writing.