Kerr, Jean -- Interview (1955-07), Theatre Arts magazine

Dave — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:29:49 +0000

I have two trifling ambitions in the theater: to make a lot of people laugh and to make a lot of money.

Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Interview (1955-07), Theatre Arts magazine
(Source)

Wilder, Thornton -- “The Art of Fiction No. 16,” interview by Richard H. Goldstone, The Paris Review (1956, Winter)

Dave — Fri, 24 May 2024 16:11:52 +0000

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it. On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity. […] The theater is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.”

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) American novelist and playwright
“The Art of Fiction No. 16,” interview by Richard H. Goldstone, The Paris Review (1956, Winter)
(Source)

Collected in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Thornton Wilder (1992).

WIST Quotations

Kerr, Jean -- Interview (1955-07), Theatre Arts magazine

Wilder, Thornton -- “The Art of Fiction No. 16,” interview by Richard H. Goldstone, The Paris Review (1956, Winter)