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I make my living now as a screenwriter! Which I’m surprised and horrified to find myself saying, but I don’t think I can support myself as a playwright at this point. I don’t think anybody does.

Tony Kushner

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Tony Kushner
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: July 16
Author
Music Pedagogue
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Anthony Robert Kushner
Anthony R. Kushner
Thinking
Saying
Support
Point
Living
Doe
Horrified
Find
Playwright
Make
Surprised
Think
Anybody

More quotes by Tony Kushner

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The kind of theater that I do is sort of ‘narrative realism,’ which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean, in a certain sense, Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways not a narrative realist.
Tony Kushner
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I don't know anything about making movies. I'd never been on a film set. I'm really kind of an idiot when it comes to figuring out where objects are in space. If they're both moving, I can't do the math. If you ever see me driving down a road, go somewhere else quickly.
Tony Kushner
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You learn that existence is legible but that you have to have a critical mind if you're going to read 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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I certainly wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a novelist because the theater is tough, but novel writing is infinitely harder. Especially with the economics of serious fiction being what they are in America.
Tony Kushner
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The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.
Tony Kushner
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We can't just stop. We're not rocks-progress, migration, motion is... modernity. It's ANIMATE, it's what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still desire for.
Tony Kushner
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God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was.
Tony Kushner
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When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.
Tony Kushner
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You don't go to the movies to do historical research, unless it's historical research about the movies.
Tony Kushner
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I tend to be sort of quiet and shy and awkward in social situations.
Tony Kushner
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One of the things I love about my job as a playwright or as a screenwriter is that I get to do a lot of research and a lot of thinking and taking a lot of notes before I turn it in.
Tony Kushner
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It's the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do.
Tony Kushner
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Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.
Tony Kushner
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I'm not religious, but I like God and he likes me.
Tony Kushner
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You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and kindness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.
Tony Kushner
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One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid... One wants... But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?
Tony Kushner
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I grew up in a small Southern town, and there were white people and black people. Coming to New York to go to Columbia, every time I went into the subway I was absolutely astounded because you see people from all over the world who actually live here - who aren't just here as tourists.
Tony Kushner
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If you [c]annot find your [h]eart's desire in your own backyard, you never lost it to begin with
Tony Kushner
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Love is the world's infinite mutability lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood.
Tony Kushner