David Ives

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.”

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

“I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.”

“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.”