Quote

I'm not an experimental artist. I have no talent for that. I need a certain kind of antecedent form to follow.

Tony Kushner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Talent
Artist
Form
Certain
Need
Needs
Antecedent
Kind
Experimental
Follow

More quotes by Tony Kushner

Image
I love reading it's a great way to avoid writing.
Tony Kushner
Image
The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.
Tony Kushner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.
Tony Kushner
Image
Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.
Tony Kushner
Image
Don't be afraid people are so afraid don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone...Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.
Tony Kushner
Image
As much as I hate his movies, Oliver Stone has an aspiration I admire, and that is that he wants his art to be part of what makes and changes public policy and cultural practice.
Tony Kushner
Image
And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway as far as I'm concerned is in New York the pride of New York theater.
Tony Kushner
Image
A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'
Tony Kushner
Image
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
Image
Justice precedes beauty. Without justice, beauty is impossible, an obscenity. And when beauty has gone, what does a cameraman do with his eye?
Tony Kushner
Image
A play should have barely been rescued from the mess it might just as easily have been.
Tony Kushner
Image
There are two strains, I think, in American playwriting, of importance. One is traditional narrative realism, which is definitely my strain, and then the other great contribution is American musical theater, which is a whole other kettle of fish.
Tony Kushner
Image
It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.
Tony Kushner
Image
In the modern era, it isn't enough to write, you must also be the Writer, with a capital 'W,' and play your part as the protagonist in the cautionary narrative in which you will fail or triumph, be in or out, hot or cold, ride the wheel of fortune.
Tony Kushner
Image
In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.
Tony Kushner
Image
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
Image
The computer, the noise of the computer feels like impatience. It's sort of the sound of impatience to me.
Tony Kushner
Image
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