Quotes by Richard Greenberg

About Richard Greenberg:

Richard Greenberg is an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He has had more than 25 plays premiere on and off-broadway in New York City and eight at Los Angeles' South Coast Repertory Theatre, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last.
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

The idea of a rupture between acts occurs in a number of my plays.

Richard Greenberg

I'm always amazed by those people who get up at 5 and write till 8 and then eat a peach and walk their canary and write two hours more and then are free to collect firewood for the rest of the afternoon. Because I just walk around thinking about play...

Richard Greenberg

My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn't poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it.

Richard Greenberg

I think I can be an intimidating energy in the room. I think I come in with an aura of wanting results because as the playwright, I know how it goes, and there's the thought, 'Why can't they catch up?'

Richard Greenberg

It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other...

Richard Greenberg

I don't write a play from beginning to end. I don't write an outline. I write scenes and moments as they occur to me. And I still write on a typewriter. It's not all in ether. It's on pages. I sequence them in a way that tends to make sense. Then I w...

Richard Greenberg

I like the Mets. I'm interested in the Mets.

Richard Greenberg

I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.

Richard Greenberg

I want to be a playwright the way people are bank tellers. I want to keep doing it and have it go steadily and smoothly.

Richard Greenberg

I started in the era when Hollywood reveled in being the most cost-inefficient industry on the planet. They used to commission a hundred scripts for every one they made.

Richard Greenberg

When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not...

Richard Greenberg

People talk about alienation in the city. Diners are a place where you feel comfortable, an extension of your house.

Richard Greenberg

I came to New York, and it was fascinating and intimidating and yielding, and all the stuff it's supposed to be. But whatever the abstract essence I was seeking, I couldn't find exactly that.

Richard Greenberg

For some reason, 1968 is a touchstone year for me. I think it was the first year I felt fully conscious.

Richard Greenberg

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue!

Richard Greenberg

Frankly, seeing my plays with an audience is something I do with gritted teeth; I find the experience very difficult. I love the moment when you have just the dress rehearsal, when no one's there; that's kind of the peak to me. When people start fili...

Richard Greenberg

My friends and family have been so well trained that they know I really mean it when I say that I don't care if the review is good, because that can be as dangerous as when it's bad. It's less demoralizing, but it can be just as confusing.

Richard Greenberg

You do think, if you have your druthers, 'I want to sort of be, not anonymous, but unknown'. But you don't have your druthers in life, do you?

Richard Greenberg

I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us.

Richard Greenberg

When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.

Richard Greenberg

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Greenberg
  • DescriptionAmerican playwright and television writer
  • BornFebruary 22, 1958
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAuthor