Choose Life over the other stuff. Get out of your head. Live. Dress up. Eat. Touch people. Help out. Give up. Love people. Give your best away. Thereโs more. Whatโs the problem? Relax. Youโre going to die. Throw a party. Eat off my plate. Sing to me. Meet me in the bedroom. Get a massage. Give one. Let your amazement out into the room. Pry open the box you hide your joy in. Be a poem.
John Patrick ShanleyAll plays stem from personal experience. I was reading psychoanalytic lit for a couple of years, obsessively, in depth, and I got involved in analyzing everyone around me. . . . Eventually, all my friends' eyes began to glaze over when I started talking this way, and I got the hint that there might be something comical in it.
John Patrick ShanleyDoubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite โ it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. Weโve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. Thatโs the silence under the chatter of our time.
John Patrick ShanleyI am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.
John Patrick Shanley