Quotes from John Patrick Shanley

I did 'Doubt' as a film, a play and an opera.

I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.

If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.

Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and *get* in my bed!

dear god, whose name i do not know. thank you for my life. i forgot... how BIG... thank you. thank you for my life.

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.

I want to say to you: Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.

i don't know what your situation is but i wanted you to know what mine is not just to explain some rude behavior, but because we're on a little boat for a while and... i'm soul sick. and you're going to see that.

Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind.

Walk towards the good. Don't be distracted by fear, by rage. Walk towards the good. In places, that path is wide. In places, perilous. Walk.

You have no right to act on your own! You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us! You have no right to step outside the church!

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant total amazement.

Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite - it is a passionate exercise.

If you close your eyes, you will be a party to all that comes after.

I still long for a shared certainty, an assumption of safety, the reassurance of believing that others know better than me what's for the best. But I have been led by the bitter necessities of an interesting life to value that age-old practice of the wise: Doubt.

God gave you a brain and a heart. The heart is warm, but your wits must be cold.

Look at you. You'd trade anything for a warm look. I'm telling you here and now, I want to see the starch in your character cultivated. If you are looking for reassurance, you can be fooled. If you forget yourself and study others, you will not be fooled.

Thinking's worse than February.

I think [doubt is] perceived in this culture as something weak or denatured, and that's a huge mistake. Conviction is what you do to be comfortable, to write The End on thinking. Doubt keeps you in the present, it keeps you conscious and reacting to and acting on what is going on now. It's work, and people like to avoid work.