John Patrick Shanley Quotes
I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.
Quotes to Explore
-
I'm just a black hole for stuff. No one should ever hand me anything, because I get so easily distracted. I'll be like, 'Oh, look, something shiny!' I'm glad I never learned how to drive. I would be really dangerous.
-
I get paid to do what I enjoy, not that common a condition.
-
Organized labor, if they're doing a responsible job, is going to organize the pooling of small amounts of money to protect the interests of the people who are not rich.
-
When you hit your 40s, you begin to take notice of the effects of aging because people that you know begin to die of heart attacks and tumors, so we take notice of the effects of aging.
-
If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.
-
I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.
-
When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change.
-
All working parents should have paid family leave. That's one of many reasons I'm working to elect Hillary Clinton. She has a plan to guarantee workers - men and women - up to 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
-
My biggest fears aren't with my work. My biggest fears are walking through hospital doors. Once you can face that, being fearless about your work is easy.
-
Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they're tender. They have to be persistent.
-
The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.
-
Different directors offer you different things, and it's not necessarily the most obvious things.
-
In trying to scramble out of a hole, it sometimes digs it deeper.
-
Farmers in Missouri and across the country must comply with a variety of federal, state, and local regulations as they grow the crops and raise the livestock that we depend on to feed the nation and the world.
-
I believe accurately remembering - and honoring - our whole past is the first step in governing in a way that effectively represents the whole America.
-
A lot of times, I'll get roles where it's the dumb blonde or the cheerleader, and I just have no interest - and it can be a great movie, it really can - or the mean girl; those things don't intrigue me much.
-
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
-
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
-
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
-
I think there is great interest amongst the younger people in this music. I think that there is a lot of them that are looking for interesting situations and music that is stimulating.
-
This process of change since my stroke has been very gradual. It is going on all the time... It is partly a physical transformation. The body itself is undergoing great changes. My problem before was that I was living largely from the head; and then after the stroke I got down into the heart.
-
I remember when I did 'Mrityudand' there was this big hoo-ha, and people were asking me why I was doing an art movie, and I would just tell them that, 'You know, what's the big deal, it's a movie.' I'm so glad that's a thing of the past.
-
Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics - by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck.
-
I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.
