Quotes from Martin McDonagh

I never really tell anyone what I'm writing beforehand because I usually don't know what it will be.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

I loved 'The Master' a lot. I'm not going to get to work with Daniel Day-Lewis, but Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best around, I think.

Everything went perfectly on 'In Bruges.' It was constant warfare, but I won all the battles and was really happy working with the actors and everything on the film.

When I started out, I was very vociferously against theatre or what I saw theatre as being, so I tried to make my plays the opposite of that - something a bit more cinematic. I'm a film kid, so I'll never have the same love of theatre as I do of movies. It's just the way I was brought up.

I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty because I think one illuminates the other. We're all cruel, aren't we? We are all extreme in one way or another at times and that's what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with.

I went to Bruges for a weekend away from London. I was supposed to be meeting a girl there the next day. It was a tentative arrangement. From the moment I saw the town, I thought, 'This place is just so cinematic, so gorgeous.' Every corner seemed to offer a new image.

I'd love to do something like 'A Canterbury Tale,' because I love the English language.

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.

I've learned not to be such a show-off and to have a bit more empathy with humanity. Or at least to fake that.

'Pulp Fiction' is an amazing film, and I haven't made one nearly as good.

My plays are always pushing towards cinema anyway. They're down and dirty, real and more fun.

I seldom feel comfortable in a theatre. I always feel like I own a cinema. I feel equally happy in an empty one as a full one. Probably happier in an empty one!

I guess I've accepted that theatre is never going to be edgy in the way I want it to be. It's too expensive for a start. And, the audience seems to be complicit in the dullness.

I fell into the theatre because I felt I was doing it well, and I stuck to it for the same reason.

I don't write all the time. But if I'm writing something, I'll just bang into it every day until it's finished. I write pretty quickly.

I've got a fondness for rabbits.

When you've got good actors, they're going to come up with good stuff, but you're never quite sure how the dynamics are going to work between them.

I realize that I am never going to grow up.

I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'

The fact that ticket prices are way too expensive, and there's only one bunch of people going to see Broadway shows, is something I've never liked.

'Beauty Queen' will always be a favourite because I think it's a really tight play, and when it's done right, there is a sadness to it that I love.

If you've got time to waste, you might as well waste it listening to people.

As a kid, as a poor-ish, working-class kid, even visiting America seemed like an impossible dream. Every time I ever went anywhere in America, it always felt cinematic and dreamlike and like a movie from the '70s or something.