Quotes from John Guare

the painter, Cezanne, would leave blank spaces on his canvas when he couldn't account for the brush strokes, or the color"--- "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 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.

Plays have a celebratory nature that no other form has. Theater always meant celebration, a birthday, a reward for good grades. I felt at home in a theater. I loved being part of an audience. All the rules - the audience has to see the play on a certain date at a certain time in a certain place in a certain seat.

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.

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.

You must keep people happy backstage because that affects what's onstage. During a run, the playwright feels like the mayor of a small town filled with noble creatures who have to get out there and make it brand new every night. When a production works, it's unlike any other joy in the world.

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.

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.

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.

I've had students at Yale: my main task with them in drama school was not helping them with their writing but showing them how valuable they were. Because they're ready to give it up and go into teaching or television.

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

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

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

I like to ground plays in reality so they can jump higher. So we can account for the trampoline, so we can account for the leap.

I ushered at the Shubert in New Haven during graduate school when plays en route to Broadway still went out of town to try out. I worked backstage at summer stock doing jobs from garbage man to strapping on Herbert Marshall's wooden leg to fixing Gloria Swanson's broken plumbing in her dressing room with her yelling at me as I worked the plunger.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

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

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

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

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.

James Joyce wrote the definitive work about Dublin while he was living in Switzerland. We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.

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.