John Guare Quotes

#1. 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

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

John Guare

#3. 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

#4. The only riots were the people trying to get tickets.

John Guare

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

John Guare

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. The Atlantic Ocean was something then.

John Guare

#12. 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

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

John Guare

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

John Guare

#15. Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

John Guare

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

John Guare

#17. 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

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

John Guare

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

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

John Guare

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

John Guare

#25. 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

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

John Guare

#27. 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

#28. 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

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

John Guare

#30. 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

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

John Guare

#32. Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

John Guare

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

John Guare

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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