Suzan-Lori Parks Quotes

• The writing of ‘Topdog’ was a great gift. I feel the play came to me because I realized that my circumstances, while causing me despair and heartbreak, also held great possibility, if only I could see it.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Gift

  Tags in Possibility, Realized

• The writer has two kinds of faith: actual writing and sitting openly. Have faith in your personal effort or sweat. And faith in God, or whatever you want to call it. Then the voices will come. Faith is the big deal.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Actual, Sweat

• The problem for me is being labeled anything. People assume, ‘Oh, she is interested in language.’ So when we notice she’s interested in character, then she’s made a big change, instead of, ‘she’s always been interested in character.’ If we can allow painters to have different periods… then we can allow playwrights to have different periods, too.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Assume, Allow

• Someone yelled at me once, ‘You never write about yourself.’ People used to get so mad at me for that. But my definition of myself is completely up for grabs. I’m everywhere, just like we all are.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Definition, Everywhere

• My plays are for the kind of black people who relate to funk music, to Parliament-Funkadelic. When those guys get out of a spaceship – the idea that black people are from outer space, there’s a poetic truth to that. We are this vast people.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Vast, Poetic

• I love my lecture tours. I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a microphone. No podium, no distance between me and the audience, and I just talk to people and get all excited and tell a lot of jokes, and sing some songs, and read from my work and remind people how powerful they are and how beautiful they are.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Microphone, Distance

• I love beautiful black-and-white movies – anything Bette Davis, especially ‘Now’, ‘Voyager’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Mildred Pierce’; anything by Orson Welles, Truffaut, or Godard; and ‘Paper Moon’ by Peter Bogdanovich.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pierce, Beautiful

• I don’t care what anybody says. Stick to the spirit of the play and you’re doing it right. It’s about embracing the spirit of the text instead of noodling some idea about things.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spirit, Instead

• Everything I write doesn’t appear to be biography until later. I often say that I’ve never written about anything I’ve experienced. Of course, that’s not true. But it doesn’t appear familiar to me at all. And maybe that’s because I have to be in a kind of coma in order to write. If it appeared familiar, I wouldn’t.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Appear, Experienced

• Being a playwright of any race is difficult, and Lord knows it gets more difficult the further you get from the middle of the road. I don’t know what kind of magic my mojo is working, but it’s working.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lord, Middle

• One could get locked in by the Pulitzer, thinking, ‘This is who I am.’ Doors open with it, but doors in your mind could close.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Locked, Doors

• My plays aren’t stylistically the same. Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Playwright, Experimental

• My father was in the Army and we moved around a lot, and one of my favorite places was the library.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Places, Army

• I like to give and get basically anything (I love to read) but especially fiction and poetry.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Basically, Poetry

• I learned that if we embrace what’s happening, we are also embracing what is possible – and a road opens up for God to meet us halfway.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opens, Happening

• I don’t read reviews. I refuse to have my ego inflated or deflated by someone I don’t know.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Read, Reviews

• I don’t consciously start writing a play that involves issues. After it’s done, I sit back like everyone else and think about what it means.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Involves, Writing

• Each moment is perfect and heaven-sent, in that each moment holds the seeds for growth.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Moment, Perfect

• Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Compassion, Difficulty

Suzan-Lori Parks (19)

Birth:	10th May, 1963
Nationality:	African, American
Profession:	Playwright, Screenwriter

About

Suzan-Lori Parks is an African-American playwright and screenwriter. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky into a military family. She spent part of her childhood in Germany and "attended German high school instead of the English speaking school for military children.

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