Katori Hall
7 quotes
Biography
"My mother said I was a weird child. I had about 15 imaginary friends and talked to myself, a lot. I still do sometimes - I love the power of pretend. Now I channel all those voices into my characters. It's probably a saner outlet."
"I always say that I’m a writer who writes more from place than race."
"I went up to my teacher and asked, “Do you know of any good scenes from plays that occur between two young black women?” She stood there perplexed. 10 seconds went by…then 20….then 30….a whole minute flew by and she couldn’t come up with one answer. “Gee, Katori, I’m so sorry, but I can’t think of one…I mean, there is a scene in Raisin but the two characters are not young…maybe August Wilson? No…most of his characters are male…I’m sorry, Katori. I just can’t think of one.” She walked away. At that moment I said to myself, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to write some then.” I wrote from an intense need to see myself and my experience reflected honestly onstage. It was quite easy to make the transition."
"Playwrights are the most gregarious writers—to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers. So whenever I have to go back into my writing cocoon, I get a little scared to be alone. But that's when the voices come to you. Silence is the start."
"Follow your intuition, listening to your dreams, your inner voice to guide you."
"In order to be great, you just have to care. You have to care about your world, community, and equality."
"We expect our leaders to be godlike. But I feel that when people try to sanctify leadership, it puts it out of the realm of regular people. And that's where the greatest leaders come from - from the people."