Playwrights From The United States

"Even if everybody suffers, your own suffering does not seem less."

""Why don't you shut up. You thief." Amazing how few words one has to use to gain one's desired effect."

"Love and affection calms the horse. Provided you can administer these before you are bitten, trampled or kicked to death. Meanwhile step back out of harm's way. Murmur quiet peaceful words. There, there now. Easy there. Quietly now. Good old fellow."

"Foxy said it was always good to use the word fucking in your threats. Then they always fucking well knew. That you Fucking well Meant it"

"I think I am at a cross roads. And which way I turn may indeed be the direction of my whole destiny." "Ah you are far too young to speak so. Life it comes. Bang. It knocks you a little this way. Bang. It knock you a little bit the other way. And the direction you go. Well you are lucky if it is not backwards." "Or bang, it could madam, flatten one altogether." "Yes, it does do that too. But then we must get up again."

"Darcy Dancer crossing the frosty cobbles of the farmyard. Snorts and stampings in the stables. The whinnies of Molly and Petunia. Who smell me near. Luke mucking out. Forking up the big brown lumps of dung matted with yellow straw and shovelling it into his barrow. At least someone is working. But I suppose I shall have to spout a few hackneyed words to pass the time of day. "Good morning to you sir. It's grand to see you up and about." "Thank you Luke. It's a chilly draughty old morning." "'Tis that sir." "Gives one a mind to thank god for inventing fire." "Ah now you've said it, sir. On these winter days you need the little bit of hell the Lord puts flaming in a grate.""

"Of the eighty thousand things that came all at once into my mind to say, I selected the one hundred and twelfth."

"But like the end of every rainbow I ran to with my sisters, all I ever found was misty rain drops."

"What's that. A massive shadow. Moving. Big white curly head. Two horns nicely curving down. On a Hereford bull. Dear God. Although I don't believe in you, here is an opportunity for you to prove to me you exist. If you will just not let that beast come after me, trapped as I am here on all fours on the edge of this bank. Darcy Dancer holding his breath. The bull slowly turning to sniff in the shadows. And the welcome sound. Of ripping grass again. The behemoth grazing. And another shadow seems like a heifer nudging beside him. Much better that he jumps on her than he wastes time chasing me."

"In a big bowl full of hatred can you ever find a spoonful of love."

"Ah, I'm getting on now. There are not many years left me. Sure what do they do with old butlers but shed them. Like a dog's winter hairs in summer. And send them with their tray into the grave. And they don't know the good servant's gone till they're sitting in all their splendour waiting in the drawing room. Wondering what's holding up the refreshment after dingling the bell down the kitchen hall. And if it's me they're calling I'd be coming only that I'm gone. And with luck be up there serving God instead."

"Tongues never still. Wagging and wagging. In one shopkeeper's ear and out to a dozen others. And in a thrice don't they have the whole story all over Ireland."

"Foxy said the whole country was night and day asking God for favours. And you'd never get a chance to slip your own in. Especially if they had any old uncles or aunts to die to leave them a bit of land, they'd say dear Jesus would you ever strike the fuckers dead."

"There is but one thing that is important, that no one can ever take your good manners from you."

"My god, one can see such a different side of people when one's merely a menial. O God what utter amazing ruddy bliss to no longer be a menial."

"Clementine climbing lonely to the rampart of the gate tower. To stand under a clear sky slowly opening from the west. Big bright stars on this moonless night. Air clean and moist. Stare up at the blazing sparkling heavens and all worldly wrong doing vanishes. Till you look down again."

"Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros. Every madman thinks everyone else mad."

"Ah Master Reginald, you've learned your first lesson in life. Unless you were better off where you've been, you're always better off where you are. But no matter where you've been or where you are you'll never know if you'll be better off where you're going."

"Bloodmourn said on the trip cross country that he frequently needed a change of human beings. To vary the flavour of the treacheries."

"Where do I keep my feelings. Of ferocious anger. While I make all my pleasant replies."

"Ahead two distant houses. Facing each other across the road. Pass between them in a crossfire of eyes."

"But with all my responsibilities these days I thought that a wife would be quite suitable. And save me paying wages."

"Having over the years abided by my little commandments. [...] Not to end up being the man folk show their children. To say don't grow up dilapidated like him."

"Strength comes from struggle."

"All I know is if there's no heaven there's sure enough been plenty of hell. They preach to you that God is good and generous. I think he must be a scoundrel. [...] Not a soul here you can trust. From the moment they lay eyes on you their little brains are scheming how to get the better of you. A back turned is a back stabbed."

"And you my boy are going to make something of yourself. Take no nonsense from inferiors and less from superiors and count on being surrounded by crass stupidity for most of your life."

"Mountains rising up purple in the evening sky. Clouds pressing darkly from the sea. Horses' hooves clattering on the stony rutted road. Brown bog lands. Heather and gorse. Tiny spots of yellow flowers. Spring lies somewhere. Hiding butterflies who will skip over the countryside. Rain streaks the carriage glass. Breezes blow up through the floor. [...] Rocking swaying and bouncing, horses churning hooves as the carriage mounts these hills. Galloping around turns, crashing over ruts. By barren bog lands. Sheep running from the path of the rumbling vehicle."

"Perhaps the last moment is not the saddest. Mine was when they wouldn't let me be an altar boy. Chose the chap who said he wanted to be close to God. I said I wanted to carry a big candle so I could look great and my aunt could see me. Waltzing on the altar of a sunday."

"On the granite steps of Macfugger House between the tall sweating pillars. The green ground dropping away. Down towards trees, great dark leafy mushrooms towering over the grass. A lonely sound of wind. The grey grey clouds cramped in the heavens. Listen for souls. When they sound. Bellowing out in the night. Thudding through ditches. Squeezing out the bitter drops of hate. To scar and sour the soil."

"Charnel Castle's ivied turrets massively silhouetted against the sky. Smoke pouring from four chimney pots. Two great black birds throb wings up into the blue from a battlement, turn, wheel and dive with gleaming wings and zoom up again in the mild air. Bleat of sheep. Call of a lamb. From which Percival if he's a good shot may get a chop. Or a trout may flip out for the breakfast table from a stream flowing by the castle wall."

"Newsboys on the street corners shouting out Herald and Mail. Their tattered jackets too small and their white naked legs and blue white feet on the wet blocks of granite, phlegm streaming from their noses. The evening herd of cold pinched dark coated figures waiting to cross at the pavement's edge, their breath making steam from their mouths. The strange purple of the sky. A ship hooting on the river. Great stacks of barrels quayside being loaded by a ship's derrick under lights. And bouncing on the cobbles, clattering huge carts tugged by massive horses. Followed here and there by impatient automobiles. Must be sadness where so many of the lower orders live inside the big broken windows. Behind these mournful unloved walls."

"And there. Caught in the morning sun. She goes. Galloping. Her hair flying from her head as Dingle's flows out from his mane. A gleaming black body rippling of muscle. Great long legs stretching out on the emerald turf."

"I swim back to the shores of privilege out of the sea of the dispossessed."

"He is young but he thinks old."

"Reach up to put a hand to some dream you kept awake. Now you take it like a red ripe apple and polish quietly up and down one's sleeve."

"Balthazar B standing on this grey wet pavement. The rain falling through a halo of lamplight. A post office, butcher, grocer and newsagent. Lonely houses behind high hedges. The wind with a seaweed smell off the sea. This girl thinly standing, clutching her handbag. The rear red light of the taxi still seen after its sound is gone."

"Life is always travelling to a sorrow."

"Eat this great bowl of emptiness."

"Unable to see further than tomorrow."

"A tall scholar rushes up the steps to the lectern and Latins out grace. Beseated. A great clatter of shifting chairs. The carvers stand at their long tables sharpening knives. The great joints heaved up on their platters at the serving hatch. Thin harassed faces of these little women stared out across the dark gowned gathering. To catch their breath and go plunging back down again deep into the bowels of this dungeon kitchen. The clank of cutlery. The passing of the jug of beer. Light refreshing ale, a gift from a prosperous brewer."

"Good larder is a man's salvation."

"The one who leads the hunt gets no splatter."

"Along the Liffey quays this night, puddles of water on the cobble stoned street. Lonely lamplights. Coal dust and barrels, crates and bundles of wire. Great shadows of the gas tank rearing in the sky. A whiff and sniff and smell of pine timber. Wild shadows against a sky faintly purple. Clouds rolling with moonlit edges. The blast of a ship's whistle. A hawser splashing in the water. Up in the crystal night the ship's red light. Trembling engines as the great black silhouette moves out on the flowing river."

""Percival, you seem to have confidence in the future." "Ah now without the present you wouldn't have a future. And sure the present is busy making the past while the future is waiting. And there's no harm keeping the future waiting while it's not here yet. And when you get there what is it but you're in the present all over again." Staring out the tiny window of the turret. Things not so bad. When you think. There's no harm keeping the future waiting."

"Interesting that in times of terror, when the boom is to be lowered, people you hire to save you trouble and trembling think instantly of their own skins. As things come out of the void to get you. Bullets, buses, trucks, germs."

"What would make you happy, Miss Tomson." "A guy with a large soul. Not the small sneaky rats careening around these days."

"Smell weakness and they close in all at once."

"I, George Smith, hereby make known my last will and testicle. First off I should like to rear up and haunt all those who tried to screw me up while living. Special attention to be given those fuck pigs who have communicated with me by letter attempting thereby to get funds from my unrelenting clutches."

"Life getting like a merrygoround with people getting on and off and no one paying for the ride."

"It would seem in life when all is said and done that it is unwise to speak to anyone if it can be avoided."