Quotes from Sarah Ruhl

I have loved enough women to know how to paint. If I had loved fewer, I would be an illustrator; if I had loved more, I would be a poet.

I think maybe heaven is a sea of untranslatable jokes. Only everyone is laughing.

American actors are taught to have objectives—what does your character want from the other character? That is business. When I deal with other people, I don't want something from them; I want a rapport. Some people say that's an objective—it's not—it's a sensation of well-being. Life is not constantly about wanting to get something from somebody else. Life is about pleasure." I hope, dear Irene, that you are in a sensation of well-being

I see it as my job to mourn him until the day I die.

What silly little things sometimes take on meaning in life, suddenly, out of nowhere. And you know they're little nothings, and you laugh at them, but all the same, you go on feeling them, you can't stop...

Be suspicious of an expert who tells you to cut a seemingly unnecessary moment out of your play. The soul of your play may reside there, quietly, inconspicuously, clothing in its unnecessariness, shining forth in its lack of necessity to be.

Mothers and daughters: two circles, and the all-important bounded sections where they are complete unto themselves. Daughters perhaps have a tendency to point at the differences, mothers to point at the commonalities.

Can the theater teach us to wait? To forestall our satisfaction? Poems teach us how to wait. The natural world makes us wait. Erik Satie teaches us how to wait. And so does much music. Will YouTube teach us how to wait? Will YouTube teach us how to die?  

Our culture values perfect pictures of ourselves, mirage, over and above authentic connection. But we meet one another through the imperfect particular of our bodies. Imperfection calls out for affinity—for the beloved to say, I too am broken, but may I join you?

Is this all we've got now? No priests to say yes son, your suffering meant something, no kings on the battlefield to say yes soldier, your suffering meant something.

And I think, as I'm surrounded by teeming life—parasites, fish, and children—I think, So, you thought you wanted to observe life? Motherhood shakes her head, clenches her fists, and demands, No, you must live it.

Perhaps we would have more sublime plays if we had more tolerance for and interest in imperfect plays. Because perfect plays are not sublime plays. Shakespeare's plays are weird and wonky and oddly shaped and wonderfully imperfect but sublime. They are as untidy men lime as nature is. Contemporary playwrights are often encouraged to make tidy plays rather than plays with cliffs and torrents

Peter Pan is great in a book -- but in real life, people who don't grow up, they're a fucking nightmare.

Love is unbounded by time

When I am not paying attention to my children, they appear to desperately need it. When I am giving them my full attention, they seem just as happy to play by themselves. It is as though they need to be certain of my attention in order to play their own games and ignore me.

Titles by their nature imply that the play's architecture is like a bull's-eye (and some are) with the point being in the center. Sometimes the point is in the margins, or in the experience of throwing the dart.

A girl, a woman who is two-thirds done, is nearer to God. A young woman on the verge of knowing herself is the most attractive thing on this earth to a man for this very reason.

When diseases and stories are chronic, doctors and writers often both run for the hills

Motherhood is a predicament. How to live fully inside of it with any grace?

I wonder how it is that we are all connected despite our tremendous differences.

If more women knew more jokes, there would be more justice in the world.

There was an abundance of sweetness. But I often felt I was observing it from a distance, rather than participating in the sweetness.

You say a prayer, Virginia. A prayer cleans the air the way water cleans the dirt.

What we think of as the soul is just a mingling of genetics and our parents, in my case, slowly torturing me, or in your case giving you complete unconditional love.