31 Quotes by Terrence McNally

Young people have got to start their own theaters, really. All good theater is a kind of mom-and-pop operation. Start your own theater.

I've had wonderful collaborators. They're very different, just as actors are. Working on a show with Nathan Lane is different from working on a show with Chita Rivera. It keeps you on your toes because it's different every time.

My first play was written when I was 23, and I'm 66 now, so that's 43 years of doing this where I sort of know where everything is. It doesn't mean I do everything right, but I know where everything is. Here, I'm very much a visitor. New York is my turf and I'm used to working with my actors.

I said if they wanted to keep the British setting in Northern England, then I will bow out, because that's not my lingo.

This play was written for these 11 actors just as 'Master Class' was written for Zoe Caldwell, or 'Frankie and Johnny' was written for Kathy Bates,

It was a time of oppression and you spoke up -- and we won. Without you, I wouldn't be standing up here either.

The New York theater community is a place I know my way around in with some certainty,

Chita Rivera is our strongest link to the Golden Age of the American musical, ... She worked with all the great choreographers and composers and was present for the creation of such seminal masterpieces.

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.