Adam Rapp Quotes - Page 2

I find that more and more I'm trying to entertain myself when I'm working, because I know the work's going to go to a horrible place.

There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren't for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family's turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.

I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry. I have a dog now, and I have to remember to walk him. When I write, that takes over and I can't do anything else. There's something exciting about that free fall, but then my life gets really screwed up. I've lost lots of relationships because of my having to ignore everything.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, "well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct".

It was like losing an important weight-bearing bone, and I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to walk the streets without it.

Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature. It becomes a kind of personal weather system. Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity. Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs. The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.

You can't run forever. There's only so much pavement that the road makers lay down. After a while, the highway quits going north and it just turns into sky. And you can't go anywhere in the sky unless you have a plane or some kind of rocket.

I feel that I'd rather know an actors' work, or have an instinct about them and sit down and have coffee with them, or I'll see them in something and I'll see if I can get along with them in some way, shape, or form.

A typical day for me is I'm writing when I'm not directing.

When I'm directing, I'm pretty much not writing, but when I'm not directing I am writing a lot.

It's strange, people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can't even answer it.

It's been hard for me to not write, and that's the only process I can speak to I guess, it's so compulsive and I need to do it all the time that sometimes I make myself not do it so I can actually tend to my life.

Whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always laughing.

The rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic and the best idea wins.

I've never really felt good at the parties, but I have enough friends now that I feel social, I used to feel very antisocial, but I think the theater helps.

I've never really felt that I've had the right hair cut, or had the right clothes.

What I've learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.

I don't put big concepts on my work, and it's all often about keeping actors in a room together and not letting them leave.

I think I'm a little more daunted by when the machinery of the play is really huge.

When it's just a few scenes and a couple of actors behaving in a room, I feel very confident with that.

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers.

I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.

I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it.

I think auditioning can be very reductive and I just hate how actors work really hard and most of them aren't going to get the job, and I hate putting them through that.