Stephen Karam Quotes

“There's this unspoken history that exists between any mother and daughter, no matter how deep and loving the bond is, twenty-five years of being raised by someone, there's a kind of deep history which means that there are shortcuts to getting on each other's nerves.”

— Stephen Karam

“So much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families.”

— Stephen Karam

“I guess we all feel like underdogs. I remember being a freshman at Brown University and not knowing what a WASP was. We were reading an Edward Albee play, and - it was just a moment of accepting, certainly that I wasn't very worldly, but also that a lot of the plays that I'd been reading, let's say other kinds of family plays, were speaking a foreign language.”

— Stephen Karam

“In reality, life was arranged and human relations were complicated so utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one's heart sank.”

— Stephen Karam

“I do think it's fascinating to see a play where everybody's sort of, in various ways, uprooted, and you see the older generation, the parents, whose faith has been something concrete that has guided them through a specific set of hurdles and circumstances.”

— Stephen Karam

“The best work that I am able to do is when I am willing to write about questions I haven't quite figured out, or things I'm really wrestling with, things that keep me up at night.”

— Stephen Karam

Writing plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.

— Stephen Karam

“I'm always very self-conscious and assume the way faith or religion might come up in my plays will seem very harsh to people of faith, or who are currently practicing.”

— Stephen Karam

“Suddenly you're at church and you hear someone pray, "For gays and lesbians, that they might realize their [sins] ... " That's happening less and less now, but all it takes is one of those when you're nine, ten, eleven, twelve - and it's hard to describe to people who aren't, because of course if you're not gay, an eleven- or twelve-year-old wouldn't even remember that that happened.”

— Stephen Karam

“I know how much respect I have for people of all different faiths, but especially for my family, who are the most important people in my life, and who are still practicing, and deeply religious.”

— Stephen Karam

Priests are very interested in theater in New York! It's this lovely reminder that priests are just people, too, who need to be entertained.

— Stephen Karam

“I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless.”

— Stephen Karam

Everyone's taste is different. But I think the best way to defend against regrets after opening night is to try your best to tell the story you want to tell. In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts.

— Stephen Karam

“As playwrights, as poets, we have to look to ourselves, listen to our guts for the final answers about what changes to make. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. And it's not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it's your baby and you know what's best.”

— Stephen Karam