Quote

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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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
Things
Rocks
Progress
Stop
Desire
Animate
Living
Migration
Stills
Modernity
Still
Stillness
Even
Motion

More quotes by 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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I love reading it's a great way to avoid writing.
Tony Kushner
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Unions are susceptible to the same ills that befall all human societies.
Tony Kushner
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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.
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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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 a sort of political person, and I feel that there's a kind of ineradicably political dimension to theater, to all theater, whether it's overtly political or not.
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
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But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic.
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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Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.
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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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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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.
Tony Kushner
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The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.
Tony Kushner
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But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.
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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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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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 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