3 Quotes & Sayings By Brian Friel

Born in 1950, Brian Friel is one of the most influential living writers. In 1972, Friel won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Dancing at Lughnasa. He has been awarded the Irish Times International Playwriting Award, the Tony Award for Best Play, and a Special Commendation from the Royal National Theatre of Ireland. He has received a number of other prestigious awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and a nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature Read more

He is a Professor of Practice at the Yale School of Drama where he teaches directing and playwriting courses.

1
Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement - as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary.. Brian Friel
2
...that it is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language. Brian Friel