Rabe Quotes & Sayings

It's sort of scary to work with your parents when you're in the same business. But there was something so very safe about that. Acting with her was just like working with a wonderful actress who just happens to be my best friend and also my mother. — Lily Rabe

I can't actually think of a job where I was relaxed the whole time. I don't think I would want to do that job. When I break into a cold sweat when I'm reading, I think, 'Oh good. That's what's supposed to be happening.' — Lily Rabe

We have far more control over our health and the condition of our bodies than we ever thought possible. — Mike Rabe

Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives. — David Rabe

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes. — David Rabe

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting. — David Rabe

For a long time I was cautious of working with my parents because I wanted to feel separate from them in the community. Now there's no more wasting time. — Lily Rabe

I really like when I read a scene and it scares me. That makes me excited. — Lily Rabe

The focus of our family life was homework and what was for dinner; getting to ballet rehearsal and getting my brother to soccer. — Lily Rabe

There's no demand for a body of work, though writers will be criticized for not having produced one. — David Rabe

I am my parents' daughter, and I always want to be. But I first wanted to make sure that I was standing on my own two feet. — Lily Rabe

Mark Conseulos is so amazing. — Lily Rabe

Truthfully, I don't know how those special effects people do it. — Lily Rabe

I think every script I read has something that sends me into a state of panic but that usually makes me want to do it. — Lily Rabe

No. I don't give that number out to every Tom, Dick and Dracula, Morgan muttered. — Michelle Rabe

Listen, a cable series is a beautiful thing because there's such amazing writing happening on television, and it's a schedule that allows you to do a play or two. There's a reason everybody wants that job! — Lily Rabe

I did have wonderful things to draw from, from my own experience and also just from friends and people I'd gone to school with who were very much immersed in this world right now. — Lily Rabe

You see a boxer with a beautiful nose and you got a fighter without heart. — Peter Rabe

When I was teeny tiny, I definitely had a voice that didn't quite match the way I looked at five. — Lily Rabe

Murderers don't even know that murder happens. — David Rabe

There's little back roads and little towns sometimes I never heard of them. I start to expect the gas station attendants to know me when I arrive. I get excited that I've been there before. I want them to welcome me. I'm disappointed when they don't. Something that I don't want to be true starts lookin' like it's al that's true only I don't know what it is. No. No. I need my marriage. I come here to tell you. I got to stay married. I'm lost without her. — David Rabe

You can't breathe for sheer revulsion when you keep finding the bodies of women with bamboo poles thrust up their vaginas. Even old women over 70 are constantly being raped. — John Rabe

It's very hard when you're doing a new play that you believe in, and you want to tell the story in the best way possible. — Lily Rabe

So, for the most part, I really like when I read a scene that scares me and makes me sweat a little bit, thinking about doing it. That's usually a good sign to me. — Lily Rabe

This is a vision of ideal reflection, ideal mimesis. God's desire for me awakens my desire for him. His relentless pursuit of me sustains my passion for him. I have found my true reflection. — Andre Rabe

Before I ever start a job that I'm really excited about, I usually have some sleepless nights or weeks or months. But that anticipation for a person like me ... I don't do so well with a lot of time off. — Lily Rabe

It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence ... I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling. — David Rabe

I'd love to give my girls a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and all that jazz, but we've raised them to love Tuscan food so much that they don't care for it. My favorite is a nice polenta with beef stew and broccoli rabe on the side. — Debi Mazar

I've been the victim a lot, so I've often played the person who's getting raped or murdered or abused. And so, to actually be raping and murdering and abusing people is a whole different kind of challenge, and one that was very difficult, at times. — Lily Rabe

No, I'm not feminist. I'm not, not a feminist. — Lily Rabe

I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd ... At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays. — David Rabe

You want to feel like people are hiring you because they want to work with you, not because of who your parents are. — Lily Rabe

Being a part of the theater community has been important to me from the time I was a child, through my parents. — Lily Rabe

Recent studies show that people who exercise their minds with stimulating activities throughout their entire lives have a 35-40 percent less chance of developing symptoms of dementia. — Mike Rabe

You will never know what your potential is unless you give life 100 percent effort every day. — Mike Rabe

Eddie: You don't have any feelings at all.
Phil: I don't have your feelings, Eddie; that's all. I have my own, they get me by. — David Rabe

Think of the health risks if you don't exercise. The consequences are real. — Mike Rabe

I had never done a 90-minute play with no intermission, so it is a bit like you get onto the train and you don't get off until it's over - and it's over very quickly, so don't miss a moment of it. That experience is very rare and specific so don't miss a minute, because there aren't very many minutes of it. — Lily Rabe

Like Rabe'a, I didn't think people should believe in God because of heaven and hell. But I didn't feel a need to run around with a torch. You can't burn down a made-up place. — John Green

I know it's such a boring interview sometimes with us at 'American Horror Story', but I just can't say a word. I would certainly love to be back, that's for sure. It's such a great job. — Lily Rabe

A woman so strong she burns heaven and drenches hell. Alaska would have liked this Rabe'a woman. — John Green

To be working in the theater steadily and to be recognized and appreciated by the community means the world. — Lily Rabe

What would you do in life if you knew you could not fail? What would you deeply regret never risking? — Mike Rabe

I will say that I've been lucky enough never to have to do a job I didn't want to do, or a play I wasn't in love with. — Lily Rabe

When I was in high school and college, my other real focus was, actually, fiction writing. So in college, I had done all these seminars with these various writers-in-residence. — Lily Rabe

You can actually program your cells toward better health and fitness. — Mike Rabe

I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold. — David Rabe

One of my mother's friends said to me, 'Your ex-boyfriends didn't stand a chance with you and your mother.' And I think I probably was unfair to them because she was the first person and the last person I called about every single thing. Sorry, ex-boyfriends. — Lily Rabe

I never found a professional environment that made the production of plays efficient. Teamwork is demanded, but there are very few teams. — David Rabe

Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing. — David Rabe

If you knew this day would be your last one, what would you be doing differently? Wouldn't you seize the day and get the most out of it? One of these days will be your last one. Why not seize every day you have left? — Mike Rabe

As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy. — Lily Rabe

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. — John Green

Sometimes I would go home from work and just stare at the wall for a couple of hours. But, I can't complain. Whatever knocks you out working is the kind of work that I want to be doing because it's always those challenges that are the most exciting, and the things I hope to get to keep doing in my work. — Lily Rabe

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it. — David Rabe

I come in here and you gotta be here; I'm thinkin' about football, and you gotta be here with your tits and your ass and this tight shrunken clothes and these shriveled jeans, so that's all I'm thinking about from the minute I see you is tits and ass. Football doesn't have a chance against it. It's like this invasion of tits and ass overwhelming my own measly individuality so I don't have a prayer to have my own thoughts about my own things except you and tits and ass and sucking and fucking and that's all I can think about. My privacy has been demolished. You think a person wants that kind of a thing to happen their heads - they are trying to give their problems some serious thought, the next thing they know there's nothing in their brains as far as they can see but your tits and ass? You think a person likes that? — David Rabe

The only thing that matters is the theater! — Lily Rabe

I chose Eat: LA as a broadcast partner because of its good taste, sense of humor, and spirit of adventure. — John Rabe

All I really want to do is someday be in a western. If I could be on a horse with a rifle, I would be a really happy camper. — Lily Rabe

I was doing a play out in L.A. 20-some-odd years ago called 'Goose and Tomtom' by David Rabe, and somebody saw it and the next thing I know I'm doing the table read of the film version of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon - one of the great films of our generation. — Richard Schiff