Quotes from Wendy Wasserstein

Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, respect me, I'm a respectable grown-up, and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.

No matter how successful I become as a playwright, my mother would be thrilled to hear me tell her that I'd just lost twenty pounds, gotten married and become a lawyer.

No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There's nothing wrong with being alone.

Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.

Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, "Respect me; I'm a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.

The signature of a truly enviable woman is the tenacity and continuity of her women friends.

Women like us have to learn to give to those who appreciate it instead of to those who expect it.

In the world of The Age of Innocence , a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate.

SCOOP: Peter, do people like you ever wonder what it's all for? PETER: People like you run the world. You decide what it's all for.

I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation.

KATE: "At fourteen months little girls' fingers and pacifiers are introduced into the vagina, and at fifteen months a girl baby has been known to fall asleep with her genitalia on her teddy bear. Finally, at sixteen months they start using a pencil." SAMANTHA: Don't little boys use pencils? HOLLY: No. They write with their cocks.

But don't men have breast and womb envy?

Life doesn't really offer that many pleasures that you can go around avoiding the obvious ones.

Bruce was a genius, conveniently born on Christmas Eve with, according to my mother, Messiah potential.

being funny is a way of being liked and a way of dealing with sadness.

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.

I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation. If I can just hold out till I'm thirty, I'll be incredible.

Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.

As I ramble through life, whatever be my goal, I will unfortunately always keep my eye upon the doughnut and not upon the whole.

The thing I longed for as a teenager is now an object of neglect and scorn. I've grown to hate my telephone.

to live life as a writer is a very lucky thing.

The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.