Martin McDonagh Quotes

If you've got time to waste, you might as well waste it listening to people.

Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.

When you've got good actors, they're going to come up with good stuff, but you're never quite sure how the dynamics are going to work between them.

It isn't about being or not being dead, it's about what you leave behind

It's the periods and the commas that you have to forget about. The words never change, but the intonations change.

I hope there's some kind of morality in all my work.

'Pulp Fiction' is an amazing film, and I haven't made one nearly as good.

I realize that I am never going to grow up.

I never really tell anyone what I'm writing beforehand because I usually don't know what it will be.

I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.

When I'm happiest writing is just not knowing where it goes and just let the characters bring you there.

All my work shares a kind of balance between black comedy and sad and despairing melancholy.

I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.

Dublin people think they are the center of the world and the center of Ireland. And they don't realize that people have to leave Ireland to get work, and they look down on people who do.

It doesn't feel like you're preaching, if you can say something in a joke.

The fact that ticket prices are way too expensive, and there's only one bunch of people going to see Broadway shows, is something I've never liked.

An Irishman I am, begora! With a heart and a spirit on me not crushed be a hundred years of oppression. I'll be getting me shillelagh out next, wait'll you see.

I never feel like a smug or a smart-alec film director, and there are plenty of those around.

I seldom feel comfortable in a theatre. I always feel like I own a cinema. I feel equally happy in an empty one as a full one. Probably happier in an empty one!

I pick and choose what I want to do at any given time, and what not to do, importantly. My agents, I won't hear about any offers or options.

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.

My plays are always pushing towards cinema anyway. They're down and dirty, real and more fun.