33 Quotes by Keith Johnstone

What a person is afraid to do, he does while possessed.

There are people who prefer to say ‘yes’ and there are people who prefer to say ‘no’. Those who say ‘yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘no’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.

An audience will remain interested if the story is advancing in some sort of organised manner, but they want to see routines interrupted, and the action continuing between the actors.

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don’t want to be rejected by other people – and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.

Almost all were total failures-they couldn’t have been put on in the village hall for the author’s friends. It wasn’t a matter of lack of talent, but of miseducation. The authors of the pseudo-plays assumed that writing should be based on other writing, not on life. My play had been influenced by Beckett, but at least the content had been mine.

My ‘failure’ was a survival tactic, and without it I would probably never have worked my way out of the trap that my education had set for me. I would have ended up with a lot more of my consciousness blocked off from me than now.