We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.
We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.
As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.
HANNAH: Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.
Can’t you function unless you’re losing?
People do terrible things to each other, but it’s worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark.
If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
I don’t really have a system or set of principles. It’s kind of common sense mixed up with instinct.
Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child.
It is a defect of God’s humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
I smoke too much whether it’s going well or badly. After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.
Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.
I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.
I write fiction because it’s a way of making statements I can disown.
I don’t write at the library, because I smoke when I work or would like the possibility of a smoke. Also, I need to be at my own desk.