Top 15 John Guare Quotes

Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York.

Plays have a celebratory nature that no other form has. Theater always meant celebration, a birthday, a reward for good grades. I felt at home in a theater. I loved being part of an audience. All the rules – the audience has to see the play on a certain date at a certain time in a certain place in a certain seat.

To stay around any place you love, you have to have a job. In college at Georgetown in the fifties, I got my first theater job checking coats at the National, which was Washington‘s main theater.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life – it lives in the constant present.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

You must keep people happy backstage because that affects what’s onstage. During a run, the playwright feels like the mayor of a small town filled with noble creatures who have to get out there and make it brand new every night. When a production works, it’s unlike any other joy in the world.

And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That’s the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it’s about listening, it’s about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

I like to ground plays in reality so they can jump higher. So we can account for the trampoline, so we can account for the leap.

It’s a lucky life to be a playwright.