Notiz John Patrick Shanley zu „the dreamer examines his pillow“:

„In the third scene of this play, Dad says, „The individual life is a dream.“ For me personally, this is a most moving idea. It frees me from my fear of death. It puts my ego where it belongs, in a place of secondary importance. It binds me to the human race, and binds the race itself to the atoms in the stars.

Who am I? This is a courageous question. As a writer and as a man I am involved in one central struggle- to discover and accept who I am. I believe all fear has its roots in denial. I have, at one time or another, denied everything. Every fact of my specific self. My parents, my Bronx origin, my Americanness, my Irishness, my appetites, my mortality, my need for love and acceptance, my jealousy, my violence, my anger.

I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.

Writing is acting is directing is living your life. I have told you the things I have just told you so that you know something of my approach to playwriting. I see no difference between writing a play and living my life. The same things that make a moment in my life succeed, combust, move, these same things make a moment in my playwriting have life. And when I move in my writing, I have moved in my life. There is no illusion. It is all the same thing.

Acting is the same as playwriting.“

 

Auszug aus Interview mit John Patrick Shanley:

J.P.S.: „…Everybody has these things locked in them, things they consider unlovable, unattractive. And they may well be. But people manipulate, show something or hide something to make somebody else act in a certain way, right? But the manipulator is always a slave to this thing. Usually by the time they get adept at it they’re not aware that they can’t stop. So they end up feeling that they’re in jail all the time because they can’t be themselves. So if anybody loves them, it’s a lie, because they’re not seeing the real person.“  Quelle BOMB Magazin

(Das ganze Interview u.a. über… Mondsüchtig,Danny and the Deep Blue Sea BOMB Magazin)

Zitat aus „Mondsüchtig“ von John Patrick Shanley:

“Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*!”