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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.

Beth Henley

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More Beth Henley Quotes

• 

  I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.

  BETH HENLEY
  CommunityMotherPlayTheatre
• 

  It’s called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn’t realize what a rage I was in.

  BETH HENLEY
  SisterWinterYears
• 

  I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

  BETH HENLEY
  CountryRestlessSchool
• 

  But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn’t a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don’t have to be very smart.

  BETH HENLEY
  CharacterSmartWriting
• 

  What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn’t you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

  BETH HENLEY
  ClassLongThinking
• 

  Plays are so much more special if they’ve never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

  BETH HENLEY
  PlaySpecialThinking
• 

  The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

  BETH HENLEY
  ChristmasSchoolWriting
• 

  I love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.

  BETH HENLEY
  MotherPhonesTalking
• 

  In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

  BETH HENLEY
  ClassLyingMovement
• 

  That’s what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?

  BETH HENLEY
  DestinyGivingSmoking
• 

  Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

  BETH HENLEY
  CountryLiveWork
• 

  I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

  BETH HENLEY
  MoneyRaiseTheatre
• 

  There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don’t even know how to say, “Hello, how do you do?” because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.

  BETH HENLEY
  LiveMindPeopleToday
• 

  It’s really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don’t get in trouble.

  BETH HENLEY
  CharacterEmotionalInteresting
• 

  That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

  BETH HENLEY
  DoneInclinationPlay
• 

  And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.

  BETH HENLEY
  CreatingDreamWriting