Sarah Ruhl Quotes

I would like to curl up and become a small thing. About this big. And still. Very still. Have you ever become so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved’s hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?

Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.

Every day as I wave to my children when I drop them off at school, or let one of them have a new experience — like crossing the street without holding my hand — I experience the struggle between love and non-attachment. It is hard to bear — the extreme love of one’s child and the thought that ultimately the child belongs to the world. There is this horrible design flaw — children are supposed to grow up and away from you; and one of you will die first.

She runs, trips and pitches down the stairs, holding her letter.
She follows the letter down, down...
Blackout. A clatter. Strange sounds — xylophones, brass bands, sounds of falling, sounds of vertigo.
Sounds of breathing.

No, you're not. If you were really sorry, you wouldn't have done it. We do as we please, and then say we're sorry. But we're not sorry. We're just uncomfortable — watching other people in pain.

Put the bad poetry in the mouths of outlandish characters. It might make bad poetry funny instead of sad.

Love is unbounded by time

Don't make a wall of glass between your play and the people watching. Don't forget they were once children, who enjoyed being read to, or sung to sleep.

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.

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.

The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.

This was the house that Paula had taken me and two other graduate students to years earlier. She had told us to go out on the deck, look at the view of the Atlantic Ocean, and say to ourselves, This is what playwriting can buy.

It's this feeling that you want to love strangers, that you want to kiss the man at the post office, or the woman at the dry cleaners - you want to wrap you arms around life, life itself, but you can't and this feeling wells up in you, and there is nowhere to put this great happiness - and you're floating - and then you fall down and become unbearably sad. And you have to go lie down on the couch.

Certain brands of guilt can be inculcated in a secular way but other brands of guilt can only be obtained with reference to the metaphysical.

This is my body. I am my soul. These are my lips. I am my word. This is my skin. I am my action. These are my legs. I am my contribution. This is my smile. I am my laughter.