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" 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

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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

Parents

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" If you put someone in a room with no script to direct, they're just going to sit there. Writing scripts is the execution for a show. Then the director takes that and hires people. It's like trying to build a house without any bricks. You need the script. I could build the house, but I have to know how. "

" Playwriting is the last great bastion of the individual writer. It's exciting precisely because it's where the money isn't. Money goes to safety, to consensus. It's not individualism. "

" 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'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. "

" Conscience is the most dangerous thing you possess. If you wake it up, it may destroy you. To live a life of total moral rigor is not necessarily the way to go. It's the path for very few people. Most people need to come up with some kind of middle ground that satisfies their practical, moral, and philosophical esthetic needs. "

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

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