Quotes by John Patrick Shanley

About John Patrick Shanley:

John Patrick Shanley is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award–winning American playwright, an Oscar winning screenwriter, and a theatre and film director.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.

John Patrick Shanley

When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn't believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented.

John Patrick Shanley

'The Miracle Worker' is just such an incredibly powerful play on stage, and is so kinetic, and athletic.

John Patrick Shanley

If you put someone in a room with no script to direct, they're just going to sit there. Writing scripts is the execution for a show. Then the director takes that and hires people. It's like trying to build a house without any bricks. You need the scr...

John Patrick Shanley

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

John Patrick Shanley

The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.

John Patrick Shanley

Back when you were doing plays like 'The Miracle Worker,' you had 20, 25 people in the cast. When you go to make the film, that's not such a stretch. But when you're doing plays like 'Proof,' it's just five people or something in the thing, and it ge...

John Patrick Shanley

I was in the Marine Corps in 1971. The idea 'Where does authority come from?' is fascinating to me. And also, the idea of a chaplain is fascinating to me because it's a man of the cloth in uniform, and it's the uniform of a killing machine. Back when...

John Patrick Shanley

I adopted two children, then I got eye disease and five rounds of surgery. I went blind in one eye, then the other eye, and that went on for three or four years. I got very enamored and involved with the theater and did a lot of plays.

John Patrick Shanley

It wasn't until I was 35 or 36, when I wrote 'Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,' that I began to get some notoriety, though I only made $5,000.

John Patrick Shanley

You have to live in order to have something to write about - you get caught up in moviemaking and celebrities and money, and it's very intoxicating, but it doesn't give you what you need as a writer. You have to do something else for that.

John Patrick Shanley

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them.

John Patrick Shanley

I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish mu...

John Patrick Shanley

Some actors are brilliant in David Mamet, but they would crash and burn in my plays and visa-versa. You either have my music in your body, or you don't.

John Patrick Shanley

Women consume, and they must be directed what to consume, or they may identify you as lunch.

John Patrick Shanley

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Patrick Shanley
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornOctober 3, 1950
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Playwright; Writer
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For Drama; Academy Award For Best Writing (Original Screenplay); Writers Guild Of America Award