Quote

If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the other person's turn to talk. But in a song, you can sing about it for another three minutes. The musical form has that unique opportunity to express at length what joy really feels like.

Marsha Norman

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Marsha Norman
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 21
Music Pedagogue
Playwright
Screenwriter
Louisville
Kentucky
Play
Opportunity
Musical
Feels
Song
Unique
Three
Minutes
Really
Another
Joy
Love
Form
Wants
Length
Like
Someone
Turn
Straight
Persons
Talk
Express
Person
Turns
Sing

More quotes by Marsha Norman

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When ''night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway.
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In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.
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Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.
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The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.
Marsha Norman
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I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.
Marsha Norman
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Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.
Marsha Norman
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Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.
Marsha Norman
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on the whole the American theater, dominated by men, does not perceive women fighting for their lives as a central issue.
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Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered.
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What's so good about a heaven where, one of these days, you're going to get your embarrassing old body back?
Marsha Norman
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At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.
Marsha Norman
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During the day, our souls gather their ... impressions of us, how our lives feel. ... Our spirits collect these impressions, keep them together, like wisps of smoke in a bag. Then, when we're asleep, our brains open up these bags of smoke ... and take a look.
Marsha Norman
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Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
Marsha Norman
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Write about the thing that frightens you most.
Marsha Norman
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Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.
Marsha Norman
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People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.
Marsha Norman
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I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.
Marsha Norman
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People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.
Marsha Norman
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If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.
Marsha Norman
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There is no point in trying to remember your dreams ... There is only the unspeakable joy of eavesdropping on your spirit, catching tiny glimpses of its independent life, resting for a moment in its wisdom, puzzling, laughing sometimes, over what it's up to, what it makes of you.
Marsha Norman