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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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Marsha Norman
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 21
Music Pedagogue
Playwright
Screenwriter
Louisville
Kentucky
Carry
Conversation
Failure
Play
Heart
Work
Inability
Thoughtful
Plays

More quotes by Marsha Norman

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I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.
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Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.
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If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.
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Write about the thing that frightens you most.
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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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People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.
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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?
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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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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.
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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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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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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
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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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Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.
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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.
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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Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.
Marsha Norman
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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.
Marsha Norman
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Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
Marsha Norman
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When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with.
Marsha Norman