John Guare Quotes

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.

Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as I don't see Character B. Knock Knock. Enter Character B.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

The great risk is always saying, "how will I communicate what I'm trying to get across to a room full of strangers sitting in the dark watching a stage?"

How much of your life can you account for? My life is a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes; I am all random”.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York.

I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.

I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.

What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do

And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.

I don't think about taking a risk. I think about how far can I go. How can I make myself. What are the risks I must create.

All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.

The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.

You can read ten books and finally come across one detail, and it's like, "now everything else makes sense. Now I know where I am."

The only riots were the people trying to get tickets.

I mean New York City is the financial capital of the world. It's where all the money passes through, the Dow Jones, whatever, that's where all the money goes.

You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.

You cannot write to resonate twenty or thirty or forty years from now. You only can write for that very day, but whatever happens is all gravy.

I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

I wanted to be a Bride of Christ but I guess now I'm a young divorcee.

We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

The Atlantic Ocean was something then.

I'm sure there are some good dramaturgs but I've never worked with one.

There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.

People rewrite the play so much to make it palatable to the audience, to make something clear, that they just deaden it. Like it was left it in the oven too long.

I think that some of these plays are lost in this new horror called development, which is a place for dramaturgs to say "let me tell you what your play means," and the life gets sucked out of a play.

Oh god, I'd just hate it if a certain dramaturg got a hold of a Pinter play, for example, which are all mystery and all music. That's how the life get's sucked out of plays.

Like a dog, a playwright lives in an eternal present and a play is never closed.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg.

You can't be a sort of pioneer.

The power of the past to still dominate our thinking today.

Every play is so important. It's a record of what life was like at the time you wrote that play or that book.

Eugene O'Neil created an American theater, and Tennessee Williams taught it how to sing.

Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play. It seems like spelling out mysterious, musical details can destroy a play by making the motivations too clear, too simplex.

I'm an American playwright. Tennessee Williams got in all our DNA.

Oh, I never use a seat belt. I don't believe in gravity.

James Joyce wrote the definitive work about Dublin while he was living in Switzerland. We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.

1975 is as much a historical document as 1803.

I only do business with the people I do business with. The people I do business with find out I do business with the people I don't do business with.... I can't do business with you.

You can't kind of take away, you either do or you don't. If you kind of take away something you're a failure.

There's no such thing as a perfect play. Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play.

The rich live hand-to-mouth too-just on a higher level.