Lynn Nottage Quotes
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Growing up in New York City, I'd flirted with the idea of driving, but between the subway and the sidewalks, I'd never needed to learn.
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The act of saying what you do helps shape you as an artist.
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A lot of the factories that had been the bedrock of many small cities were being shut down, which led me to investigate what I'm calling the 'de-industrial revolution.'
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Saying, 'I'm going to create jobs' is great, but before you create jobs, something has to be offered to alleviate some of the suffering now.
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If you lead with the anger, it will turn off the audience. And what I want is the audience to engage with the material and to listen and then to ask questions. I think that 'Ruined' was very successful at doing that.
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The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.
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I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world.
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It is such a joy to join a legacy of amazing female playwrights who have managed to break through the glass ceiling and reinvigorate the Broadway stage by bringing a fresh and necessary perspective.
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I wonder: Would there be a black president if people hadn't already begun imagining, through film and television, that a black man is president? It's self-actualization.
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My grandfather was a Pullman porter, and my father put his way through college by cleaning floors at night in the libraries. I understand that working people are in some way the bedrock of my existence and the existence of many people here.
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What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.
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In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields.
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There was no way I was going to write about Africa and not include the triumphant continuity of life that had also been part of my experience there. It's not just war and famine all the time.
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As a woman of color, slowly and with some coercing, the not-for-profit theaters around the country are beginning to recognize and embrace the power of our stories, but with regards to Broadway and other commercial venues, we remain very much marginalized and excluded from that larger creative conversation.
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I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays.
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We live in a global society, and I don't think we can talk about, quote unquote, 'American themes' anymore.
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I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.
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I wrote 'Ruined' and 'Vera Stark' at the same time. That's just how my brain functions - when I'm dwelling someplace very heavy, I need a release.
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I love my people's history. I feel a huge responsibility to tell the stories of my past and my ancestors' past.
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For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.
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In many ways, I consider those to be my formative years, because when you're in school, you have a distant relationship to the world in that most of what you're learning is from books and lectures. But at Amnesty, I came face to face with realities in a very direct and harsh way.
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Women are standing up and leaning forward and asserting their power.
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The essence of creativity is to look beyond where you can actually see. I don't want to dwell in same place too long.
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I always thought of my mother as a warrior woman, and I became interested in pursuing stories of women who invent lives in order to survive.