Tony Kushner Quotes

American - Playwright | July 16, 1956 -

I work best after the deadline has passed, when I'm in a panic.

Tony Kushner

WorkBestDeadlinePanicAfter

I feel there's a power in theatre, but it's an indirect power. It's like the relationship of the sleeper to the unconscious. You discover things you can't afford to countenance in waking life. You can forget them, remember them a day later or not have any idea what they are about.

Tony Kushner

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The work of artists is to find what's humanly possible - possibility's furthest reaches.

Tony Kushner

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There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility.

Tony Kushner

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I'm going to start work on developing a series for HBO, because I'm naturally given to episodic stories of considerable length. And I won't have to listen to complaints about how wordy and long my work is if you can watch it on your telephone on the subway: You can make it conform to your day as if it were a book.

Tony Kushner

WorkDayStartBookLongYou

I had a dream, in 1985, I believe, when a friend I'd gone to school with was sick - one of the first people I knew who'd gotten the AIDS virus. I had a dream of him in his bedroom with an angel crashing through the ceiling. I wrote a poem called 'Angels in America.' I've never looked at the poem since the day I wrote it.

Tony Kushner

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The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.

Tony Kushner

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

Tony Kushner

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Artists know that diligence counts as much, if not more, as inspiration; in art, as in politics, patience counts as much as revolution.

Tony Kushner

PatienceArtPoliticsRevolution

Theater really gets damaged when there is a paucity of good criticism around.

Tony Kushner

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You could argue that Barack Obama faced in '08 a situation as bad as any president since the Great Depression. What Obama inherited from the Bush administration, we all remember, was just an absolute global catastrophe.

Tony Kushner

GreatDepressionGreat DepressionYou

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

Tony Kushner

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