John Guare Quotes & Sayings

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. — John Guare

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

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

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

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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

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. — John Guare

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

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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

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

The New York City 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. — John Guare

The only riots were the people trying to get tickets. — John Guare

The Atlantic Ocean was something then. — John Guare

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

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

But if I had to choose between where I live and you, I'd rip up everything I own because the only landscape worth looking is the landscape of the human body. I kiss your Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I kiss your Missouri and Monongahela and Susquehanna and Shenandoah and Rio Grande. I kiss the confluence of all those rivers. I kiss your amber waves of grain. I kiss your spacious skies, your rocket's red glare, your hand I love, your purple mountain'd majesty. But most of all I kiss your head. I kiss the place where we make our decisions. I kiss the place where we keep our resolves. The place where we do our dreams. I kiss the place behind the eyes where we store up secrets and knowledge to save us if we're caught in a corridor on a dark, wintry evening. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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

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

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. — John Guare

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." — John Guare

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism. — John Guare

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? — John Guare

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

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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. — John Guare

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