David Ives Quotations

I have been approached now and again about sitcoms, but, with very few exceptions, one simply needs to move to L.A. for at least a year or two these days if one wants to develop a series - which is what writing a pilot means. I've also been approached about writing episodes for sitcoms, but in order to do that one actually has to watch sitcoms. . . . Life's too short for television, and I don't what it on my actual gravestone, HE STARED AT A BOX FOR 10,000 HOURS.

All reviews should carry a Surgeon General's warning. The good ones turn your head, the bad ones break your heart.

I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.

I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.

Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

Necessarily, I'm always involved in casting, as any playwright is, because the whole process of putting on a play is a collaborative, organic effort on the part of a bunch of people trying to think alike.

Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.

Plays are always about intense relationships, whether they're intense love relationships or family relationships or existential relationships.

Learning to write for the theatre is learning to be a human being, because the theatre by its very nature makes you deal with other human beings.

I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to tell a story in cinematic ways, but theater is a much more elusive craft.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn't thinking, 'Oh, God, two more hours of this.

Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?

This documentary is the first attempt since 1957 to revisit the thoughts and ideas of Albert Schweitzer using the technological tools of today. It is also an attempt to make Schweitzer understandable to the youth of today using a medium through which they are used to receiving and processing information.

I hoped that students would emotionally connect to the people and problems they saw around them and want to do something about it.

The goal of the conference is to revive the interest and knowledge about Albert Schweitzer and the humanitarian values he promoted.