Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It’s the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
Everything we feel is made of Time. All the beauties of life are shaped by it. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
Things rust, you know, like the heart. My cardiologist said, ‘It’s a pump; use it – that’s the sole advice I’ve got to give you.’ It’s the same in playwriting. Don’t theorise about it. Do it. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
It is very, very difficult for a playwright to write a scene in which a young man has his first deep experience of sex with a girl whom he found immensely attractive, is fully satisfied by this event and gets up and blinds a lot of horses. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
The rhetoric is the key to the character. It’s the verbal music of the piece. Peter Shaffer Read Quote
I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. I don’t think I ever had a single discussion with my parents about faith. It was just something gently imposed. Peter Shaffer Read Quote