Lynn Nottage quotes

In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity. (Lynn Nottage)

If you lead with the anger, it will turn off the audience. And what I want is the audience to engage with the material and to listen and then to ask questions. I think that 'Ruined' was very successful at doing that.

Lynn Nottage

When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.

Lynn Nottage

It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way.

Lynn Nottage

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire.

Lynn Nottage

Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.

Lynn Nottage

Each play I write has its own unique origin story.

Lynn Nottage

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.

Lynn Nottage

I need a release from whatever I'm writing.

Lynn Nottage

I always thought of my mother as a warrior woman, and I became interested in pursuing stories of women who invent lives in order to survive.

Lynn Nottage

I'm a schizophrenic writer. (Lynn Nottage)

It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way. These characters are purely fiction-they're inspired by people I met-which I think gave me a certain amount of leeway that I wouldn't have had otherwise were it a verbatim piece.

Lynn Nottage

We go in and try to be completely transparent with them: I am not a journalist, I'm a playwright, and I'm developing a piece that is creative and not going to be solely based on their lives but inspired by conversations that we have.

Lynn Nottage

My interest in theatre and storytelling began in my mother's kitchen. It was a meeting place for my mother's large circle of friends.

Lynn Nottage

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

Lynn Nottage

The thing is, I can't control that built-in bias because it's going to exist. What I can do is reflect the world through my very unique prism and perhaps people will be able to relate. I can't control how it's received, nor do I want to control how it's perceived. What I want is for people to go into the theatre and in some way their perception is shifted, so that if they do enter with their biases, perhaps they won't leave with them.

Lynn Nottage