I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.
Tony KushnerWhat makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient.
Tony KushnerHere's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.
Tony KushnerPeople are more easily manipulated when they don't have information. If you ensure that kids grow up without basic reading skills, math skills, and so forth, then you ensure that they can't act effectively.
Tony KushnerIf you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware there's a menace. That's costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.
Tony KushnerI think that when you're writing plays, and I think it's also true with novels, it helps to have an ear for the music of language, for what we call poetry, for the sound effects and the way that the sound can produce sensual feeling at odds with or consonant with the content of the work. Your work is also gorgeous writing. It's very unfortunate when you open a novel that everybody's loving and it's just, you know, an excruciatingly bad sentence.
Tony Kushner