John Guare Quotes

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.

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

The only riots were the people trying to get tickets.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

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

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

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

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

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we're so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.

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.

The Atlantic Ocean was something then.

What I hate about kitchen-sink dramas is [this idea] that the set is real, therefore you're going to be seeing truth. You have to earn truth. Truth can't be a part of the fact that people appear to talk that way and live in that room. You're looking for the poetry in something, and I don't mean poetry in the fancy sense. Naturalism believes by just replicating a thing you give the truth, rather than earning the truth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg.

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.

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.

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

New Orleans was a thrilling place of all kinds of races, it was a dangerous place. It was really and truly the only international city on the continent of North America. There were all different races and everything was celebrated, and it was a place of difference, and everybody was different and it was so odd, the minute that America took over, the minute that the Louisiana territory became part of the United States of America, instantly you were either black or white. There was no nuance. and so a free man of color who could own property was suddenly not allowed to.

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.

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."

Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

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.

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.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

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?"

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.

The imagination says listen to me. I am your darkest voice. I am your 4 a.m. voice. I am the voice that wakes you up and says this is what I'm afraid of. Do not listen to me at your peril.... The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.

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.

Everyone talks about America, this great country. You hear, "I'm more patriotic than you are. No, I'm more patriotic!" But how few people know the history of this country and how we came into being. That's the part that just amazed me.

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

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

I am the same artist with the same nagging questions I had in my early 20's. What's real and what isn't? How do we tell what's real in our lives? How do we see things as they are? What is my role in life? If the Signature hadn't forced the issue by devoting its season to my plays, I could at least believe I had changed. Really, they're all the same! What is SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION but THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with money?

1975 is as much a historical document as 1803.

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

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.

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

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