In 1998, he won an Academy Award for his screenplay for the film Moonstruck. He also won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in drama for his stage play Doubt: A Parable. In 2008, he directed a critically acclaimed film version of Doubt which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

In 2009, he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Doubt, but the award went to Simon Beaufoy, writer of Slumdog Millionaire.

• October 3, 1950: Born
• 1983: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (play)
• 1984: Savage in Limbo (play)
• 1986: Italian American Reconciliation (play)
• 1987: Moonstruck
• 1988: Best Screenplay Academy Award
• 1989: January Man
• 1990: Joe Versus the Volcano:
• 1991: Beggars in the House of Plenty (play)
• 1993: Alive
• 1993: Four Dogs and a Bone (play)
• 2002: Live from Baghdad
• 2004: Doubt: A Parable (play)
• 2005: Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 2005: Defiance (play)
• 2008: Doubt

• "What led to the church scandals was blindness that people had about who was good and who was bad, and what was right and what was wrong." NPR: John Patrick Shanley on Dogma and 'Doubt'

• "It’s an important part of my personality that I continually adjudicate, but I never reach a verdict."New York Times: Doubt and Doubts of a Workingman (December 4, 2008)

• "You can’t know exactly what’s going on in your neighbor’s house or in his head or his heart. You can make suppositions, you can make assumptions, but you always have to factor in that you can’t know."New York Times: Doubt and Doubts of a Workingman (December 4, 2008)