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" My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn't poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it. "

Richard Greenberg

Job

Mother

Depression

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" I was formed by 'The Forsyte Saga' marathon. There was something about seeing all those events telescoped that was unbelievably moving: that sense of time as something that can be tinkered with. "

" It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time. "

" You do think, if you have your druthers, 'I want to sort of be, not anonymous, but unknown'. But you don't have your druthers in life, do you? "

" I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait. "

Richard Greenberg

Changes

Think

" I think I'm a writer, and it's my job. People in other professions are expected to do their jobs all the time. Why shouldn't I? "

" I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us. "

" I started in the era when Hollywood reveled in being the most cost-inefficient industry on the planet. They used to commission a hundred scripts for every one they made. "

" For some reason, 1968 is a touchstone year for me. I think it was the first year I felt fully conscious. "

Richard Greenberg

Year

First

" I came to New York, and it was fascinating and intimidating and yielding, and all the stuff it's supposed to be. But whatever the abstract essence I was seeking, I couldn't find exactly that. "

" I think I can be an intimidating energy in the room. I think I come in with an aura of wanting results because as the playwright, I know how it goes, and there's the thought, 'Why can't they catch up?' "

" It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other, it becomes this paralyzing monolith. "

" Frankly, seeing my plays with an audience is something I do with gritted teeth; I find the experience very difficult. I love the moment when you have just the dress rehearsal, when no one's there; that's kind of the peak to me. When people start filing in, I like to file out. "

" People talk about alienation in the city. Diners are a place where you feel comfortable, an extension of your house. "

" When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament. "

" My usual route is, I do a play at South Coast Rep, then there's time between and I revise it, and then I take it to New York. "

" My friends and family have been so well trained that they know I really mean it when I say that I don't care if the review is good, because that can be as dangerous as when it's bad. It's less demoralizing, but it can be just as confusing. "

" By the time I started writing plays, Broadway was never an expectation, so it's never been central. "

" When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat. "

" I want to be a playwright the way people are bank tellers. I want to keep doing it and have it go steadily and smoothly. "

" I don't write a play from beginning to end. I don't write an outline. I write scenes and moments as they occur to me. And I still write on a typewriter. It's not all in ether. It's on pages. I sequence them in a way that tends to make sense. Then I write what's missing, and that's my first draft. "