1
This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.Sarah Ruhl
2
A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.Sarah Ruhl
3
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.Sarah Ruhl
4
Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.Sarah Ruhl
5
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.Sarah Ruhl
6
Do you think we make sad things into songs in order to hold on to the sadness or to banish it– I think it is to banish the sadness. So then if you write a happy song, is it not sadder than a sad song because by making it you have banished your own happiness into a song?Sarah Ruhl
7
I hate parties. And a wedding is the biggest party of all. All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower. He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them. Then I have to greet them.Sarah Ruhl
8
Hands are difficult. You would think they would be just five quick lines, but no, they have personalities as intimate as faces. Elizabeth's hands, for instance–they are fine hands, with long fingers that remind me of tapered candles. A person one has loved–the memory of their hands. Did they flutter or sit still? Dry? Moist? Cool on a hot forehead? What? That is what I wish to express in my paintings. The memory–of the movement–of very particular hands, even though they appear to be unmoving on canvas.Sarah Ruhl
9
Do you not think, Mrs. Givings, that snow is always kind? Because it has to fall slowly, to meet the ground slowly, or the eyelash slowly– And things that meet each other slowly are kind.Sarah Ruhl
10
Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness.Sarah Ruhl
11
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. If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much. But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats. This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful. Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.Sarah Ruhl
12
Motherhood is a predicament. How to live fully inside of it with any grace?Sarah Ruhl
13
I wonder how it is that we are all connected despite our tremendous differences.Sarah Ruhl
14
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.Sarah Ruhl
15
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?Sarah Ruhl
16
I've never been in love, never in my life. Oh, I've dreamed of love, dreamed endlessly, day and night, but my soul is like a fine piano that's locked, and the key is lost.Sarah Ruhl
17
I think a person has to believe in something, or search out some kind of faith;otherwise life is empty, nothing. How can you live not knowing why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky... Either you know why you live, or it's all small, unnecessary bits.Sarah Ruhl
18
Oh, where is it, where did my past go, when I was young, happy and intelligent, when my dreams and thoughts had some grace, and the present and future were lit up with hope? Why is it, that when we've just started to live, we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy, useless, with flattened-out souls?Sarah Ruhl
19
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...Sarah Ruhl
20
When you read a novel, it seems that everything is clear, trite and understandable. But when you yourself fall in love, you understand that nobody knows anything and everyone must decide for themselves.Sarah Ruhl
21
When you snatch happiness in little bits, fits and starts, and lose it, like me, you become coarse, little by little, you become hateful.Sarah Ruhl
22
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.Sarah Ruhl
23
That is why they have poets–to classify all the degrees of love. It is for scientists to classify the maladies arising from the want of it.Sarah Ruhl
24
I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.Sarah Ruhl
25
I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.Sarah Ruhl
26
I hate parties. And a wedding is the biggest party of all. All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower. He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them. Then I have to greet them. A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day. I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding. .Sarah Ruhl
27
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.Sarah Ruhl
28
If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much. But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.Sarah Ruhl