113 Quotes by Lynn Nottage

I can’t quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire.

I need a release from whatever I’m writing.

I was repeatedly told that there isn’t an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, ‘Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don’t do it?’ I said, ‘I think you’re wrong.’

For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.

Replace judgment with curiosity.

The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.

The stage is the last bastion of segregation.

There is an enduring feeling that women can write domestic dramas but don't have the muscularity or the vision to write state-of-the-nation narratives.

It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines.