Quotes from Lynn Nottage

The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.

I see procrastination and research as part of my artistic process.

We need to diversify the people who are backstage and producing and marketing these shows. It's the limitations of these people that are holding Broadway back.

When I sat in rooms with middle-aged white men, I heard them speaking like young black men in America. They had been solidly middle class for the majority of their working careers, but now they were feeling angry, disaffected, and in some cases, they actually had tears in their eyes.

Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.

Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture.

The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.

The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry. The person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams. The person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson, and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller.

For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.

My fears about where theater is going - it's the Hollywood model, where people are chasing the almighty dollar and making commercial decisions based on nothing more than generating income for themselves and their theaters.

The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.

I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.

I always describe race as the final taboo in American theatre. There's a real reluctance to have that conversation in an open, honest way on the stage.

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.

My hobby is raising my children.

We live in a global society, and I don't think we can talk about, quote unquote, 'American themes' anymore.

In my family history, there are generations of women who were abandoned by men. It's one of the themes of my family.

American audiences very rarely deal with material outside their borders.

It's incumbent on us to reach beyond the confines of the institutions that traditionally produce art and find new ways to get it to the people.

In many ways, I consider those to be my formative years, because when you're in school, you have a distant relationship to the world in that most of what you're learning is from books and lectures. But at Amnesty, I came face to face with realities in a very direct and harsh way.

I knew that there was a great deal of depth and life that was sitting just beyond my mother's gaze.

All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.

I think of myself as a healing artist.

Here's the dilemma of the modern age: There used to be actions that workers could take, in the form of a strike. But now, that's being pre-empted by lockouts. They don't even have that leverage to protect their jobs.