Quotes from Spalding Gray

When I first came to New York City in 1967, I joined up with Richard Schechner's Performance Group - where we worked in the Performing Garage in SoHo.

To be famous is to be stuck in an inflexible place. But at least it is to be stuck with money.

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.

I understood once I held a baby in my arms, why some people have the need to keep having them.

I was raised as an upper-class WASP in New England, and there was this old tradition there that everyone would simply be guided into the right way after Ivy League college and onward and upward. And it rejected me, I rejected it, and I ended up as a kind of refugee, really.

What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place.

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to.

I say that I can't make anything up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to tell it because telling you're always in control, you're like God.

Real life has always let me down. That's why I do the monologues. I have always said I would rather tell a life than live a life. But I have to live a life in order to tell one.

I'm basically a fearful person. I'm a phobic person.

I may look like an American WASPy doctor or lawyer, but I feel just like Woody Allen. Don't cast me for my looks - I have a very ironic, existential, crazy Jew in me.

If I can make people laugh it's like being a good lover.

I hadn't had a perfect moment yet. And it's very important for me to have perfect moments in exotic countries like that... it kind of lets you know when it's time to go home.

He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation.

When people used to ask me why I got involved with Hollywood films, I would say jokingly that it was for the health insurance.

I'm the man who sits behind a table and tells true stories from his life. I'm also an actor. I was trained as an actor at Emerson College, and I use that training to play myself.

I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to.

I knew I couldn't live in America and I wasn't ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City .

It could drive you mad to wake up to the fact that your whole life has been about chasing some false goal.

All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.

And in this role (the Stage Manager) I could speak from my heart, you know!....provided I can memorize the lines.

The finished product is a result of a series of organic, creative mistakes--perception itself becoming the editor of the final report.

Psychoanalysis is the transformation of hysterical misery into common unhappiness.