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 HENLEYThe 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.
More Beth Henley Quotes
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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 -
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 -
I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
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But here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
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And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.
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I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
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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.
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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.
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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 -
In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.
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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.
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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?
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I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
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I’m very into the first production of the show.
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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







