Marsha Norman Quotes

If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.

I hate milk. Coats your throat as bad as okra. Something just downright disgusting about it.

Success is always something that you have to recover from.

When 'night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway.

People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.

Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.

I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.

When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with.

On the whole the American theater, dominated by men, does not perceive women fighting for their lives as a central issue.

People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

Think of a musical as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string, you can't put the pearls around your neck.

Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered.

I'm who I was waiting for. I didn't make it.

I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.

What's so good about a heaven where, one of these days, you're going to get your embarrassing old body back?

I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used.

I feel that I speak the musical language.

How could I love him, Jessie. I didn't have a thing he wanted.

Why do you have to know so much about things, Jessie? There's just not that much to things that I could ever see.

Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.

Write about the thing that frightens you most.

Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.

Dreams are illustrations ... from the book your soul is writing about you.