Beth Henley Quotations

Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny.

Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class

It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

My fault now is making my plays too short.

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright

It's called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn't realize what a rage I was in.

Plays are so much more special if they've never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class.

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money

You can't just go in there and open your mouth until the cast and director feel comfortable with you.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.

I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.

I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

I'm very into the first production of the show

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

When we were doing Control Freaks, it was all about being out of control in rehearsals and then doing a play that is so utterly controlled.

I find it fascinating to think about what the world is going to be like when people won't talk anymore.

There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don't even know how to say, "Hello, how do you do?" because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won't have to bother doing it themselves.

I love writing for the screen.

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

I love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.

That's what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?

I didn't really know how to get it to a producer or how to get it to an agent. Nobody's going to look at it unless it's a success.

I think that people have to be able to see two sides of the coin to survive because it is a racist society and yet you're being raised by racists.

I wrote a play in sixth grade called Swing High, Swing Low. It was about Dolly, a girl who lives in the suburbs and goes to New York to be an artist.

I think I had a job in a children's theatre. I taught badly because I was into nihilism at the time and that's just not where you go with teaching.

Yes, you have actors that are all over the board in how they've been trained and what they like and what they are used to or how they perform best.

I've always emotionally tried to detach myself from my screenwriting and just love doing it, enjoy doing it, and I try to do adaptations.

I remember not knowing what a cue light was because I'd never worked in a production that was high class enough to have a cue light.

The class I liked the best, that I think helped me the most, was my movement class because when I got out of high school, I was very hunched over.