I can't seem to help writing love stories. I definitely crave romance. When I was young, I craved romance in books, but I didn't want to read just romance - love plays such a big part in our lives, it shouldn't be cut out and restricted to its own fiction.
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 always wanted to be an independent maverick, writing plays and putting them on myself.
My first inkling that I might have a yen for directing came when I realized I enjoyed creating plays for my various sports teams more than I actually liked playing the game.
You can make plans but if the opposition plays well, then all your plans become worthless.
My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.
My two boys have each done a play. They've done school plays as well, but one of them did a local production of 'Waiting For Godot,' and he played the boy.
I went for endless auditions for tiny parts in obscure plays, and never got one job until I was in 'Four Weddings'.
My brother plays guitar and base and writes. His name is Chase Ryan.
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.
When I am captaining a side, the way I play would be the way my team plays as well. If I will be joking around all the time, I wouldn't expect people to take me seriously.
I trained in theater. And I started in theater with my first two jobs doing stage plays.
Women are only children of a larger growth. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.
An actor is an impersonator; he plays many different roles. If you played the same role all the time, God - that'd be a boring career. When you take on different roles and become a different person, that's called acting... It's a challenge.
I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality, most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
Oh, I was completely hooked on movies and plays and theater from the time I was a day old - I was very, very early on in love with movies and I loved plays.
My heroes always are mostly my parents - my father especially, and my mom, who's passed on already. My dad is a very strong man, and by him being educated, and a principal and school superintendent over 37 years, he plays such a big role in my life.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
I was always fast; I was always racing guys that were older than me and beating them, so I always had speed. I was able to make good cuts at a young age, on the side of the house with my dad, going through different plays, working on cuts and stuff like that.
I show up in a playoff game, I have my sideline sheet. I can't even spit plays out, I get so excited. I mean, you get nervous. These are critical, do-or-die situations. Third down and 1, Red Zone, what do I call? Two minute drill? Are we going to go no huddle? These are decisions that you wrestle with.
But some people will say you just did these programs. Well, yes, the programs are important and I'm proud of the programs, but mostly I'm proud of the way the San Francisco Symphony plays these programs.
It's my job to get us in good plays, or more importantly, out of bad plays. That's what I did.
My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language.
In high school, we used to sign to each other during the game, signaling different plays and stuff like that. It was kind of fun. It was definitely unique.
I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.
The most moving scene for me in 'Pride and Prejudice' is the Pemberley music room scene: Elizabeth has just saved Darcy's sister from embarrassment and confusion, and as the music plays on, Darcy's look of gratitude becomes a look of love, which we see reciprocated in Elizabeth's eyes.
I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies.
It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in 'The Practice' than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.
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 all about temperament.
On certain plays and situations I feel like I have the advantage. But sometimes I just have to not think about the size of the guy in front of me.
I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.
I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.
I love plays. Even bad ones. I like the fact that actual live, breathing people are standing before you in tense situations that you are not personally responsible for.
Michael is the kind of guy who has rhythm; he has rock'n'roll in his soul, whether he really plays it or not.