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" Back when you were doing plays like 'The Miracle Worker,' you had 20, 25 people in the cast. When you go to make the film, that's not such a stretch. But when you're doing plays like 'Proof,' it's just five people or something in the thing, and it gets to be a really difficult re-conception. "

John Patrick Shanley

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" Some actors are brilliant in David Mamet, but they would crash and burn in my plays and visa-versa. You either have my music in your body, or you don't. "

" Trying to lead an interesting life, a fruitful life, is a big challenge. "

" I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish. "

" I adopted two children, then I got eye disease and five rounds of surgery. I went blind in one eye, then the other eye, and that went on for three or four years. I got very enamored and involved with the theater and did a lot of plays. "

" Women consume, and they must be directed what to consume, or they may identify you as lunch. "

" There is some level on which this life must occasionally become repugnant and unappetizing to you and you must step back from it. And then you have a new relationship with it, and then you step back into it from a different angle - with a new appetite - and then you find the next leg of your journey. "

" It wasn't until I was 35 or 36, when I wrote 'Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,' that I began to get some notoriety, though I only made $5,000. "

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" The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters. "

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" I would say that my parents were intermittently proud of me. They couldn't hang onto it, you know? It would come and go, like the flu. "

John Patrick Shanley

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" I did 'Doubt' as a film, a play and an opera. "

" I've done very well in the film business. Whenever I have wanted something, the film business has given it to me. I'm very fortunate. My big problem in life has always been, 'What do I want?' "

John Patrick Shanley

Life

Done

" I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them. "

" When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is. "

" 'The Miracle Worker' is just such an incredibly powerful play on stage, and is so kinetic, and athletic. "

" When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn't believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented. "

" When I finally went to Ireland, I had to go. It was 1993. My father was finally too old to travel alone, and he asked me to take him home. When an old man asks you to take him home, you have to do it. "