Spalding Gray > Quotes

“I knew I couldn't live in America and I wasn't ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City .”
― Spalding Gray

“All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.”
― Spalding Gray, The Journals of Spalding Gray

“It could drive you mad to wake up to the fact that your whole life has been about chasing some false goal.”
― Spalding Gray, Impossible Vacation

“And in this role (the Stage Manager) I could speak from my heart, you know!....provided I can memorize the lines.”
― Spalding Gray, Monster in a Box

“The finished product is a result of a series of organic, creative mistakes--perception itself becoming the editor of the final report.”
― Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia

“A private car was waiting for us and Renée and I were driven back to the Pleasure Prison. As we rode along I was thinking, “Why do I feel so inflated, so pumped up, so on edge? I have been here eight weeks and worked only eight days.” I mean, talk about mad dogs and Englishmen, the British were incredible. A sixty-year-old makeup man stood for hours each day in the burning sun, just to press ice packs on our necks so we wouldn’t faint, and I was complaining? I was feeling ravaged, all spoiled and puffed up. But, oh, how I was going to miss it. How I was going to miss it. Riding in the car, I said a silent farewell. Farewell to the fantastic breakfasts, the pineapple like I’d never tasted and probably never will taste again. Farewell to the fresh mango and papaya, farewell to the Thai maid and the fresh, clean, cotton sheets on the king-size bed every night. Farewell to the incredible free lunches under the circus tent with fresh meat flown in from America every day. Roast lamb, roast potatoes and green beans at 110 degrees, in accordance with British Equity. Farewell to the cakes and teas and ices at four. Farewell to the Thai driver with the tinted glasses and the Mercedes with the one-way windows. Farewell to the single fresh rose in the glass on my bureau every morning. And just as I was dozing off in the Pleasure Prison, I had a flash. An inkling. I suddenly thought I knew what it was that killed Marilyn Monroe.”
― Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia

“Psychoanalysis is the transformation of hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”
― Spalding Gray, Monster in a Box

“Soon we began to collect a little group of odd people who would drink with us every cocktail hour. Brigitte, who was a 22-year-old German, very beautiful, could have been on the cover of Stern magazine. Her boyfriend Volker was one of the most beautiful men I'd ever met - people said he looked like James Hunt, the English racecar driver. He was like Billy Budd. He was from Germany and had been a cowboy in Wyoming. Then there was Elford Elliot from England, who had something to do with producing garden gnomes. He was tripping on acid all the time and going out to Delos, this little island off Mykonos, chipping little pieces off the ancient ruins, which he then brought back in the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then there was Bryan, an IBM operator from Australia, who fancied himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure. I don't know why. The only story of his I remember was about some Australians who stole a garden gnome from the front lawn of a very elegant mansion and took it for a trip around the world. They would send postcards back to the owner saying things like, 'Having a lovely time in the Fiji Islands' and sign it, 'The Garden Gnome.' After six weeks, they brought the garden gnome back and left it on the lawn with little suitcases full of tiny clothing they'd knitted for it.”
― Spalding Gray, Sex and Death to the Age 14

“an invisible cloud of evil that circles the world and lands at random in Germany, Cambodia, possibly Iran and Beirut, maybe even America—”
― Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia