Sarah Ruhl Quotes

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.

There’s a word in Japanese for being sad in the springtime – a whole word for just being sad – about how pretty the flowers are and how soon they’re going to die.

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.

the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake.

I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.

Narrative is an accumulation of knowledge about the future. We begin in the present and end in the present, and in the middle is an accumulation of future possibilities

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.

Dear Hermia. I know we haven’t always connected, every second of the day. Husbands and wives seldom do. The joy between husband and wife is elusive, but it is strong. It endures countless moments of silent betrayal, navigates complicated labyrinths of emotional retreats. I know that sometimes you were somewhere else when we made love. I was, too. But in those moments of climax, when the darkness descended, and our fantasies dissolved into the air under the quickening heat of our desire — then, then, we were in that room together. And that is all that matters. Love, Gordon.

We need Harry Potter.

And in this day and age, we sometimes seem to care more about the record of joy than the experience of joy itself.

Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.

A good joke cleans your insides out. If I don't laugh for a week, I feel dirty. I feel dirty now, like my insides are rotting.

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

Play itself is a primary process, not a luxury, not a hobby, but something all children must do to survive into adulthood.

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.