Top Tony Kushner Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Tony Kushner Biography

Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. He co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film Munich, and he wrote the screenplay for the 2012 film Lincoln. Both movies were critically acclaimed, and he received Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. He received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013.

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Tony Kushner Quotes

Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course-arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.

Lying, Writing, Luxury, Despair, Fukushima, Lies

If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.

Choice, Choices, Forced, Lie, Lying, Thinking

Torture yourself about your failures. And then get back to work.

Back, Back To Work, Failures, Torture, Writing

In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.

Ahead, Dream, Kind, Progress, World

Justice precedes beauty. Without justice, beauty is impossible, an obscenity. And when beauty has gone, what does a cameraman do with his eye?

Cameraman, Doe, Eye, Gone, Justice

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.

Broadway, Current, Numbers, People, Remains, Theatre

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.

America, Fiction, Harder, Morning, Novel, Writing

We all romp about, grieving, wondering, but with rare exception we mostly remain suspended in the Rhetorical Colloidal Forever that agglutinates between Might and Do.

Colloidal, Forever, Grieving, Might, Mostly, Romp

Love is the world's infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood.

Blood, Faintly, Inevitable, Love Is, Lying, Magnificent

I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, I try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then I see someone I want, and it's like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I'm losing.

Heart, Nail, Nails, See, Spike, Trying

The dreams of the left are always beautiful - the imagining of a better world, the damnation of the present one. This faith, this luminescent anger - these are worthy of being called human. These are the Beautiful that an age produces.

Age, Beautiful, Dream, Luminescent, Present

I just wondered what a thing it would be. . . if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free. It would be. . . heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and. . . Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unemcumbered, into the morning.

Away, Gone Away, Heartless, Justice, Morning, Terror

The body is the garden of the soul.

Body, Garden, Soul

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.

Fail, Play, Wheel, Wheels, Write, Writing

The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.

Angels In America, Anthem, Cracker, White

Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites. . . some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way.

Admirable, America, Audience, Literature, Theatre

I hate America. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s got to love something.

Country, Crazy, Deliberate, Hate, Set, Stories

I don't know anything about making movies. I'd never been on a film set. I'm really kind of an idiot when it comes to figuring out where objects are in space. If they're both moving, I can't do the math. If you ever see me driving down a road, go somewhere else quickly.

Driving, Making, Math, Moving, Objects, Somewhere Else

If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware there's a menace. That's costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.

Catch, Gay, Hands, Hold, Psychics

I love reading; it's a great way to avoid writing.

Reading, Way, Writing

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