Top 43 David Henry Hwang Quotes
#1. There is something very unique in American iconography about this notion of the pursuit of happiness.
David Henry Hwang
#2. I've studied Chinese in college, but basically, I'm not bilingual.
David Henry Hwang
#4. This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air
too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.
David Henry Hwang
#5. You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.
David Henry Hwang
#6. For a long time, it was hard for me to get my work done in Chicago. Silk Road gave me opportunities to do shows like 'Golden Child' - shows that nobody else seemed interested in. And they bring an artistic integrity to the work that matches anything you'll find at a bigger theatre.
David Henry Hwang
#7. If I do a play, it's my vision, and everybody else is working on the production to support that. If I do an opera, I feel like part of my job is to support that composer, to try and create something that allows the composer to do his or her best work. In movies, it's usually the director.
David Henry Hwang
#9. Well, there's no guarantee of failure in life like happiness in high school.
David Henry Hwang
#10. I am almost famous in China, because I have that Broadway cachet.
David Henry Hwang
#11. With theatre, we all agree to suspend our disbelief about so many things, but not about race. It's totally OK to have one actor playing five roles - people are willing to believe that. But they won't believe it if there's a black or an Asian kid who has white parents. What does that say about us?
David Henry Hwang
#12. It's the stories that make my heart beat faster ... those are the ones to write about
David Henry Hwang
#13. I knew I was Chinese, but growing up, it never occurred to me that that had any particular implication or that it should differentiate me in any way. I thought it was a minor detail, like having red hair.
David Henry Hwang
#14. I'm interested in internationalism. It's the new multiculturalism. How we deal with each other isn't sufficient any more. It's about time we examine how we interact with the rest of the world we live in.
David Henry Hwang
#15. I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said 'Deformed Man's Toilet,' that kind of thing.
David Henry Hwang
#16. I've never quite understood the idea of a "season." Whenever an artistic director says to me, 'I have this slot,' I always start to feel we're parking cars or something.
David Henry Hwang
#18. Sometimes I hate you, sometimes I hate myself, but always I miss you
David Henry Hwang
#19. Gallimard: You have to do what I say! I'm conjuring you up in my mind!
Song: Rene, I've never done what you've said. Why should it be any different in your mind?
David Henry Hwang
#20. There's something about China and its rush to capitalism that I find confusing. At the same time, we live in an America where capitalists oppose any government interference with free markets, while in China you have a very controlled, state-planned market where economic growth is better than ours.
David Henry Hwang
#21. We all deal with failure. If you're lucky to have a long career, it's part of the experience.
David Henry Hwang
#22. And you wonder, what's wrong with me? Will anyone beautiful want me?
David Henry Hwang
#23. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated, because a woman can't think for herself
David Henry Hwang
#24. Now I see
we are always most revolted by the things hidden within us.
David Henry Hwang
#25. Gallimard: It's ... a pure sacrifice. He's unworthy, but what can she do? She loves him ... so much. It's a very beautiful story.
Song: Well, yes, to a Westerner.
Gallimard: Exuse me?
Song: It's one of your favotite fantasies, isn't it? The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man.
David Henry Hwang
#26. To me to write well is to battle stereotypes. To write well is to create three-dimensional characters that seem human.
David Henry Hwang
#27. Happiness is so rare that our mind can turn somersaults to protect it.
David Henry Hwang
#29. I think that plays are probably the most personal, because it's just me in charge, but sometimes it's just really - I think that there's honor in being a good artist, and there's honor in being a good 'craftsperson.'
David Henry Hwang
#30. With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.
David Henry Hwang
#31. Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men? ... Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.
David Henry Hwang
#32. Tonight, I've finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.
David Henry Hwang
#33. I define the American dream as the ability to imagine a way that you want your life to turn out, and have a reasonable hope that you can achieve that.
David Henry Hwang
#35. For the myths of the East, the myths of the West, the myths of men, and the myths of women - these have so saturated our consciousness that truthful contact between nations and lovers can only be the result of heroic effort.
David Henry Hwang
#36. But is it possible for a woman to be too uninhibited, too willing, so as to seem almost too... masculine?
David Henry Hwang
#38. Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after they're dead.
David Henry Hwang
#39. My new play 'Chinglish,' which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It's bilingual. And it's about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers.
David Henry Hwang
#41. You aren't allowed to ask at auditions, legally, a person's race.
David Henry Hwang
#42. Even if you're lucky to have a play on Broadway like 'Chinglish,' you don't necessarily earn enough off it to support the years it takes to get there.
David Henry Hwang
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