black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Beth Henley

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

Class Long Thinking
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

Christmas School Writing
I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I’d rather write plays.
BETH HENLEY

Couple Play Writing
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

Character Smart Writing
I’m very into the first production of the show.
BETH HENLEY

Firsts Production Show
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

Country Live Work
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

Character Emotional Interesting
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

Destiny Giving Smoking
In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.
BETH HENLEY

Class Lying Movement
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

Live Mind People Today
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

Play Special Thinking
I love writing for the screen.
BETH HENLEY

Love Screens Writing
I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEY

Divorced Own Wretchedness
Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.
BETH HENLEY

Director People Pigs
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

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

Creating Dream Writing

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beth Henley Quotes