John Guare Quotes

I've never believed in seeking perfection at the risk of losing everything.

You have to be very flexible and understand as a director, especially as a writer/director, that you cannot hang onto stuff really hard. You have to be ready to accept those happy accidents and to anticipate that they are going to happen and capitalize on them.

Look, if you're playing Romeo and your Juliet is a pig, you find something you can love about pigs!

I've always been a strong supporter of environmental protection and initiatives in that area. But I'm willing to set priorities. If we have to make reductions in one place, we'll have to-in order to increase another place, I'm willing to do that.

I used to be very rigid because I just wanted to get through it. Now, if I think a scene should go a certain way and it goes another, I'm able to go that new way with ease.

Actors will say 'yes' to anything.

It's difficult to keep in touch with someone when you're moving around all the time. I've decided that you can have it all, but you can't have it all, all of the time.

But I just think we've got such a continuity with what we're doing that most people come in and fill in the blanks. And sometimes we leave a lot of blanks to be filled.

I don't feel that I have to control every aspect of things that I appear in. You learn a lot performing someone else's writing.

Every project is different. Adapting 'Robopocalypse' would be totally different than adapting, say, 'Hunger Games.' Each project has its own life and its own identity. You get into trouble when you think there's one single way to approach everything. Each project, there's a different way to attack it.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

To me, one of the things I love about being an actor is that it's never done; it's never perfect, and so it's the process. It's like practicing being okay with things not being perfect and things being outside of your control.

My natural inclination to be improv rather than an educated character serves me well.

At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine, so we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz, where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature, poetry... stuff that we like. It's fun.

Negotiating is a little like jazz. You improvise on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you’re not always sure how to get there.

Diplomacy is a little bit like Jazz. It’s improvisation on a theme.

Becoming a mom forced me to re-prioritize and make room for the things that are most important, while recognizing that there are things I can let go of, and the world won't crumble around me.

Life is about compromise - in relationships and at work.

You can't juggle it all 100 percent. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to do everything.

I tried working with the best of directors and producers. I tried being selective, but things didn't work out. Now, I am open to working with anybody and everybody who is good. Or I'll try to make it good. That suits me.

The nice thing about the theatre is you can always change it. With a movie, once it's there, you're stuck with it.

If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.

There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also.

I personally don't lock in a performance, because I do leave room for things to happen, so I just make sure I'm very intimate with what I'm saying and why I'm saying it so that no matter what happens, we can do whatever we want to do and leave space for play.

Our ape legs make us great generalists - we can walk, run and climb. But when you try to do too many things at once, you can end up with problems.