I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he’s writing about. I think, you just can’t move them about, you know. – Peter Shaffer
Our function as playwrights to some extent is to make audiences see with their ears, because films make us see with our eyes much better. – Peter Shaffer
And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy. – Peter Shaffer
I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright. – Peter Shaffer
Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process. – Peter Shaffer
You never quite know what’s going to strike your imagination, or something that won’t going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me. – Peter Shaffer
I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England. – Peter Shaffer
We… our war began September the 3rd 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and thereafter the great state of danger in England at that time, with the bombings, necessitated the evacuation of children. – Peter Shaffer
The conquistadors and their followers were very rough people, and they were fixated on gold and silver. They were oblivious to the astonishing achievements of the Inca civilisation. – Peter Shaffer
Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It’s the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play. – Peter Shaffer
In London, ‘Equus’ caused a sensation because it displayed cruelty to horses; in New York, because it allegedly displayed cruelty to psychiatrists. – Peter Shaffer
It’s an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him… he never bores me, and he doesn’t… not only bore me, that’s too strong a word. – Peter Shaffer
Things rust, you know, like the heart. My cardiologist said, ‘It’s a pump; use it – that’s the sole advice I’ve got to give you.’ It’s the same in playwriting. Don’t theorise about it. Do it. – Peter Shaffer
Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That’s not love, it’s just rubbish. – Peter Shaffer
I discover what I mean as I write. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, ‘Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?’ – Peter Shaffer
But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own. – Peter Shaffer
Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right. – Peter Shaffer
