American - Playwright | July 16, 1956 -
A play should have barely been rescued from the mess it might just as easily have been.
Tony Kushner
PlayMessMightBeenJustShould
I write everything with fountain pens. I don't know why. I've done it since I was bar mitzvahed. I was given a fountain pen, a Parker fountain pen, and I loved it, and I've never liked writing anything with pencils or ball-points.
WritingLovedPenKnowDoneWhy
Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and, if I'm upset, I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great.
GreatExperienceYouI CanPlay
Unions are susceptible to the same ills that befall all human societies.
UnionsHumanSameSusceptibleIlls
I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.
BelieveThinkBetterDebatePlace
The way that same-sex marriage should reach the federal level is that it absolutely should be decided by the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. It's a 14th Amendment issue. There's no argument about it.
MarriageReachArgumentWayPossible
You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.
HopeMeThinkYouGuiltyBecome
One of the things I learned in 'Slavs!' is that it's much easier to talk about being gay than it is to talk about being a socialist. People are afraid of socialism, and plays that deal with economics are scarier to them.
PeopleEconomicsSocialismGayTalk
People shouldn't trust artists and they shouldn't trust art. Part of the fun of art is that it invites you to interpret it.
ArtTrustFunPeopleYouArtists
When I teach writing, I always tell my students you should assume that the audience you're writing for is smarter than you. You can't write if you don't think they're on your side, because then you start to yell at them or preach down to them.
WritingStartThinkYouDownTeach
Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.
CultureDirectionAmericanGayMore
And 'Queer Eye' is fascinating. It has a pinch-me-I'm-dreaming quality. It's very bourgeois, of course, and much more about the liberation of the consumer than the liberation of the democratic citizen.
QualityEyeCitizenMoreDemocratic
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