David Ives Quotes

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

David Ives

#2. I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.

David Ives

#3. 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.

David Ives

#4. 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?

David Ives

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

David Ives

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

David Ives

#7. 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.

David Ives

#8. 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.

David Ives

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

David Ives

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

David Ives

#11. 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.

David Ives

#12. 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.

David Ives