Wendy Wasserstein > Quotes

“Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“The signature of a truly enviable woman is the tenacity and continuity of her women friends.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, Shiksa Goddess, or, How I Spent My Forties: Essays

“Women like us have to learn to give to those who appreciate it instead of to those who expect it.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles

“The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“But don't men have breast and womb envy?”
― Wendy Wasserstein, Uncommon Women and Others

“In the world of The Age of Innocence, a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“Life doesn't really offer that many pleasures that you can go around avoiding the obvious ones.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, Uncommon Women and Others

“SCOOP: Peter, do people like you ever wonder what it’s all for?
PETER: People like you run the world. You decide what it’s all for.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles

“I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles and Other Plays

“KATE: “At fourteen months little girls’ fingers and pacifiers are introduced into the vagina, and at fifteen months a girl baby has been known to fall asleep with her genitalia on her teddy bear. Finally, at sixteen months they start using a pencil.”
SAMANTHA: Don’t little boys use pencils?
HOLLY: No. They write with their cocks.”
― Wendy Wasserstein, Uncommon Women and Others