Quotes from John Lahr

I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk; the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself.

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.

'The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't always happen.

Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.

Theatre people, who are an adaptive species, know that to remain sane in the process of production where everyone and his uncle has an opinion about how to fix a show, you must pick the people whose knowledge and taste you trust and stick only to these few. The Tweetocracy is no place to look.

Like the tail fins on fifties American cars or the parabolic shapes of Populuxe furniture, 'West Side Story' incarnates the dream of momentum in the golden age of the twentieth century.

When Elvis made his mass-media debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - his notorious gyrations filmed only from the waist up - I fell off the family chaise longue with delight.