Christopher Durang Quotes

On the one hand, I’m grateful to be hired and thrilled to be paid.

I thought if I can do something more playful and light like my play BEYOND THERAPY, it might be a money maker. I think one of the reasons BEYOND THERAPY has legs – it’s been very successful for me around the country – is because it’s a friendly play, rather sunny.

I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic.

Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over? Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsetting novel in which the hero is the country, and the president is this disturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worse and worse and worse.

Laughter can bring a new perspective.

Since it’s based on my parents, it’s more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them.

I write intuitively, and with most of my plays, I don’t know what is always going to happen. This means I can sometimes go off on a wrong tangent, and with luck then rewrite it in a better direction. But it means I sometimes surprise myself as I’m going along.

I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.

My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it’s possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually.

I need a life. I need a friend. I need a change. But nothing ever changes.

Then in college I became obsessed with film, and wanted to be part of that.

When my parents separated, I was very grateful.

Unless you go through all the genuine angers you feel, both justified and unjustified, the feelings of love that you have will not have any legitimate base and will be at least partially false. Plus, eventually you will go crazy.