Sarah Kane Quotes & Sayings

And tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me ... — Sarah Kane

You can only kill yourself if you're not already dead. — Sarah Kane

If I could be free of you without having to lose you. — Sarah Kane

Some will call this self-indulgence
(They are lucky not to know its truth)
Some will know the simple fact of pain
This is becoming my normality — Sarah Kane

I'm not a brand name, I'm a person. — Sarah Kane

Embrace beautiful lies - the chronic insanity of the sane — Sarah Kane

The only thing that's permanent is destruction
we're all going to disappear
trying to leave a mark more permanent that myself. — Sarah Kane

What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief. — Sarah Kane

Here I am and there is my body dancing on glass In accident time where there are no accidents You have no choice the choice comes after — Sarah Kane

You get mixed messages because I have mixed feelings. — Sarah Kane

She's talking about herself in the third person because the idea of being who she is, of acknowledging that she is herself, is more than her pride can take. — Sarah Kane

(A very long silence.)
- But you have friends.
(A long silence.)
You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
(A long silence.)
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
(A long silence.)
What do you offer?
(Silence.)
— Sarah Kane

I hope you never understand, because I like you. I like you, I like you. — Sarah Kane

You know, most good playwrights write seven good plays and then something happens and after that they're crap. — Sarah Kane

No one survives life. — Sarah Kane

As a child I liked to piss on the carpet.
The carpet rotted and I blamed it on the dog. — Sarah Kane

A small girl became increasingly paralysed by her parents' frequently violent rows.
Sometimes she would spend hours standing completely still in the toilet, simply
because that was where she happened to be when the fight began.
Finally, in moments of calm, she would take bottles of milk from the fridge or
doorstep and leave them in places where she may later become trapped. Her
parents were unable to understand why they found bottles of sour milk in every
room in the house. — Sarah Kane

What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? — Sarah Kane

Your disbelief cures nothing. — Sarah Kane

Built to be lonely
to love the absent.
Find me
Free me
from this
corrosive doubt
futile despair
horror in repose.
I can fill my space
fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart. — Sarah Kane

A circle is the only geometric shape defined by its centre. No chicken and egg about it, the centre came first, the circumference follows. The earth, by definition, has a centre. And only the fool that knows it can go wherever he pleases, knowing the centre will hold him down, stop him flying out of orbit. But when your sense of centre shifts, comes whizzing to the surface, the balance has gone. The balance has gone. The balance my baby has gone. — Sarah Kane

I am much fucking angrier than you think. — Sarah Kane

But you have friends.
You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportave.
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportave
what do you offer.
... if I could remember any more of my lines I'd add them
so basically this is a preface to the whole play. I would like to quote the whole play. Currently my mind is afraid to remember the play. — Sarah Kane

PHAEDRE: You're in pain. I adore you. — Sarah Kane

I don't have music, Christ I wish I had music but all I have is words. — Sarah Kane

Sanity is found at the centre of convulsion, where madness is scorched
from the bisected soul. — Sarah Kane

I'm here, got no choice. But you, you should be telling people. — Sarah Kane

Only love can save me and love has destroyed me. — Sarah Kane

I am the beast at the end of the rope. — Sarah Kane

Your hair is an act of God. — Sarah Kane

I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre ... but they don't. They expect to sit back and not participate. — Sarah Kane

I know. I'm angry because I understand, not because I don't. — Sarah Kane

Burning in a hot tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about my 'illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's no point in anything because I'm going to die. — Sarah Kane

But I am not here and never have been. — Sarah Kane

Don't say no to me you can't say no to me because it's such a relief to have love again and to lie in bed and be held and touched and kissed and adored and your heart will leap when you hear my voice and see my smile and feel my breath on your neck and your heart will race when I want to see you and I will lie to you from day one and use you and screw you and break your heart because you broke mine first and you will love me more each day until the weight is unbearable and your life is mine and you'll die alone because I will take what I want then walk away and owe you nothing it's always there it's always been there and you cannot deny the life you feel fuck that life fuck that life fuck that life I have lost you now. — Sarah Kane

No boy is worth crying over, and the one who is won't make you cry. — Sarah Kane

No one can hate me more than I hate myself. — Sarah Kane

I feel your pain but I cannot hold your life in my hands. — Sarah Kane

And when I don't feel it, it's pointless.
Think about getting up it's pointless.
Think about eating it's pointless.
Think about dressing it's pointless.
Think about speaking it's pointless.
Think about dying only it's totally
fucking pointless. — Sarah Kane

A fourteen year old to steal my virginity on the moor and rape me till I come. — Sarah Kane

We made love, and then she threw up. — Sarah Kane

I am an emotional plagiarist, stealing other people's pain, subsuming it into my own until I can't remember whose it is any more. — Sarah Kane

Have you made any plans?
Take an overdose, slash my wrists then hang myself.
All those things together?
It couldn't possibly be misconstrued as a cry for help. — Sarah Kane

When depression visits
I shall hang myself
to the sound of my lover's breathing — Sarah Kane

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you for rejecting me by never being there, fuck you for making me feel like shit about myself, fuck you for bleeding the fucking love and life out of me, fuck my father for fucking up my life for good and fuck my mother for not leaving him, but most of all, fuck you God for making me love a person who does not exist.
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. — Sarah Kane

Body and soul can never be married
I need to become who I already am and will bellow forever at this incongruity which has committed me to hell — Sarah Kane

The chicken's still dancing
the chicken won't stop — Sarah Kane

I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it. — Sarah Kane

Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can. — Sarah Kane

Drowning in a sea of logic
this monstrous state of palsy — Sarah Kane

I am jealous of my sleeping lover and cover his induced
unconsciousness. — Sarah Kane

I've faked orgasms before, but this is the first time I've faked not having an orgasm. — Sarah Kane

Hatch opens
Stark light
the rupture begins — Sarah Kane

I crave white on white and black, but my thoughts race in glorious technicolour, prodding me awake, whipping away the warm blanket of invisibility every time it sears to smother my mind in nothing. — Sarah Kane

If there is a God, I'd like to look him in the face knowing I'd died as I lived. In conscious sin. — Sarah Kane

And the rats eat my face. So what. — Sarah Kane

I feel like I'm eighty years old. I'm tired of life and my mind wants to die. — Sarah Kane

Comedy is easy. First, people have to fall down. Next, include someone a little hefty. It's a hoot. — Sarah Kane

I love you still,
Against my will. — Sarah Kane

You'll be all right. You're strong. I know you'll be okay because I like you and you can't like someone who doesn't like themself. The people I fear for are the ones who I don't like because they hate themselves so much they won't let anyone else like them either. But I do like you. I'll miss you. And I know you'll be okay. — Sarah Kane

I have no interest in trying to manipulate people's emotions or opinions. — Sarah Kane

- I won't be able to think. I won't be able to work.
- Nothing will interfere with your work like suicide.
(Silence)
- I dreamt that I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room for half an hour.
(A long silence)
- Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more fucking capable of living.
Let's do it. — Sarah Kane

I've never in my life had a problem giving another person what they
want. But no one's ever been able to do that for me. No one touches me,
no one gets near me. But now you've touched me somewhere so fucking
deep I can't believe and I can't be that for you. Because I can't find you. — Sarah Kane

I'm tired of my life and my mind wants to die. — Sarah Kane

Long before I had the chance to adore all of you, I adored the bits of you I could see. — Sarah Kane

Of course I loved you, you saved my life. I wish you hadn't I wish you hadn't I wish you'd left me alone. — Sarah Kane

There is an objective reality in which my body and mind are one. But I am not here and never have been. — Sarah Kane

M The heat is going out of me.
C The heart is going out of me.
B I feel nothing, nothing.
I feel nothing. — Sarah Kane

Sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you and I cannot go on I cannot fucking go on without expressing this terrible so fucking awful physical aching fucking longing I have for you. And I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing. Do you feel nothing? — Sarah Kane

At home I'm clean. Like it never happened. Tell them you saw me. Tell them ... you saw me. — Sarah Kane

- I used to love you.
- What's changed?
- You.
- No. Now you see me. That's all. — Sarah Kane

To feed, help, protect, comfort, console, support, nurse, or heal
to be fed, helped, nursed, protected, comforted, consoled, supported, nursed, or healed
to form mutually enjoyable, enduring, cooperating and reciprocating relationship with Other, with an equal
to be forgiven
to be loved
to be free — Sarah Kane

It is myself I have never met whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind — Sarah Kane

To create something beautiful about despair or out of a feeling of despair is for me the most hopeful life affirming thing a person can do — Sarah Kane

I sing without hope on the boundary — Sarah Kane

Please. Don't switch off my mind by attempting to straighten me out. Listen and understand, and when you feel contempt don't express it, at least not verbally, at least not to me. — Sarah Kane

Death is my lover and he wants to move in. — Sarah Kane

If you died it would be like my bones had been removed. No one would know why, but I would collapse. — Sarah Kane

I dreamt I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live-I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room half an hour. — Sarah Kane

I cannot touch my essential self. — Sarah Kane

They will love me for that which destroys me. — Sarah Kane

Hippolytus: Do you believe in God?
Priest: (Looks at him.)
Hippolytus: I know what I am. And always will be. But you. You sin knowing you'll confess. Then you're forgiven. And then you start all over again.
How do you dare mock a God so powerful? Unless you don't really believe.
Priest: This is your confession, not mine.
Hippolytus: Then why are you on your knees? God certainly is merciful. If I were him I'd despise you. I'd wipe you off the face of the earth for your dishonesty.
Priest: You're not God.
Hippolytus: No. A prince. God on earth. But not God. Fortunate for all concerned. I'd not allow you to sin knowing you'd confess and get away with it.
Priest: Heaven would be empty.
Hippolytus: A kingdom of honest men, honestly sinning. And death for those who try to cover their arse. — Sarah Kane

Sleep with a dog and rise full of fleas. — Sarah Kane

Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame. — Sarah Kane

A room of expressionless faces staring blankly at my pain, so devoid of meaning there must be evil intent. — Sarah Kane

Phaedra: I wanted to see your face when you came.
Hippolytus: Why?
Phaedra: I'd like to see you lose yourself.
Hippolytus: It's not a pleasant sight.
Phaedra: Why, what do you look like?
Hippolytus: Every other stupid fucker. — Sarah Kane

I dread the loss of her I've never touched
love keeps me a slave in a cage of tears
I gnaw my tongue with which to her I can never speak
I miss a woman who was never born
I kiss a woman across the years that say we shall never meet
Everything passes
Everything perishes
Everything palls
my thought walks away with a killing smile
leaving discordant anxiety
which roars in my soul
No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope — Sarah Kane

There's not a drug on earth can make life meaningful — Sarah Kane