1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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
5
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