John Guare Quotations

I believe that the New York City Ballet, its practical value is that it's about expansion of human possibilities. It's about healing. It's about food.

Mel said, 'Just make it your own.' And she said, 'I'll kiss each several paper for amends. Aye, mira, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Mel and I just looked at each other - 'There's the show.'

And we remember it as it was when we first saw Maria Tallchief or Suzanne Farrell in it. And now it's Wendy Whelan, it's tomorrow's dancer.

That's why Puccini's work is so alive - because he creates such extraordinary pieces of theater. It's not dependent on personality.

The weirdest thing was that we rehearsed in the exact same room we rehearsed in 34 years ago, ... When I went into the washroom and looked in the mirror, I thought, 'Who is this white-haired guy?'

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.

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.

the little children that their favorite song is Taps.

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.

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.

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 think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

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.

The Atlantic Ocean was something then.

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.

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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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."

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

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.

The only riots were the people trying to get tickets.

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.

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

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.

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