Sarah Kane Quotations

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.

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

I'm not a brand name, I'm a person.

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

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

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.

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.

Here I am and there is my body dancing on glass.

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

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

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?

I love you still, Against my will.

Your hair is an act of God.

Death is my lover and he wants to move in.

You get mixed messages because I have mixed feelings.

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.

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

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

I am the beast at the end of the rope.

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.

I feel like I’m eighty years old. I’m tired of life and my mind wants to die.

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

Sleep with a dog and rise full of fleas.

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.

Embrace beautiful lies - the chronic insanity of the sane

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

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.

I don’t have music, Christ I wish I had music but all I have is words.

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.

Only love can save me and love has destroyed me.

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

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

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

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.

They will love me for that which destroys me.

No one survives life.

the chicken's still dancing the chicken won't stop

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.

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

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

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.

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