Ayad Akhtar Quotes

• The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Happy Life, Secret, Respect Yourself

  45 Copy quote

• I don't have an ideal reader. I'm trying to reach something simple and, I believe, universal, in every single person.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Believe, Simple, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think of myself as a narrative artist. I don't think of myself as a novelist or screenwriter or playwright. All of those modalities of processing and experiencing narrative are obviously very different, and I'm not sure that I prefer any one to the other. I think the novel gives you the opportunity to have a kind of interiority that you can't have in the theater, which is pure exteriority.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Artist, Opportunity, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I feel like one of the things that is central to American life is the religious experience, and I think that the experience of being Muslim in America is as valid and as important a perspective on the religious experience of America as evangelical Christianity or Judaism - whatever it may be.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Religious, Thinking, America

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Powerful, Really Deep, Most Powerful

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Reality, Who We Are, Force

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Self, World, Rupture

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• Here's the problem: we are living in a time when the act of reading is changing. The nature of a reader's attention is changing. The capacity for deep literary engagement is changing.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Reading, Attention, Problem

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I started to understand that for me, art was no longer about self-expression but about creative engagement with the world. I started to respond in an excited way to making work inside an industry and not feeling the constraints of audience expectation as some kind of thing that I should avoid.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Art, Self, Expression

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Political, Awareness, Preoccupation

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

• I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don't want to talk about that - especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let's say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Islamic, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Meaningful, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't want to test that simple sense of being human. I don't want to transform it.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Simple, Being Human

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have no interest in problematizing things. So what I am writing to is that simple sense of being human in myself.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Writing, Simple, Being Human

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've always felt a connection to kids who go to church. I think I'm fundamentally a religiously oriented and religiously minded person. It's very easy for me to communicate with people who have that same grounding, that same vocabulary or modality of thinking and expressing themselves.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Kids, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The Quran is many different things, and we also have to see the Quran almost as a secondary source commenting on the Old Testament.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Different, Old Testament

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know what it's like to be Jewish, but I suspect there is some aspect of that: being Jewish is the thing that bonds you as opposed to being Jewish from Poland, or Jewish from Hungary.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Issues, Political, Intellectual

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• I consider myself to have been formed by a lot of the locutions and aesthetics and principles of the Muslim way of life, and those are an important part of my childhood and my identity.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Childhood, Important, Identity

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Trying, Denial, Levels

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I feel like that religions generally ask the biggest questions. They may not always have the best answers, but they're the zone of human activity that regularly asks the biggest questions.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Answers, May, Feels

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Mean, Understanding, Important

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Jobs, Artist, Propaganda

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

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