Jen Silverman > Quotes

“And then, at the same time—in a place that is buried deep in my core—I want this play to be good. I want to be transported by it. I want it to fulfill its contract with me, the audience member—I want it to wrap itself around me, bring me someplace I can’t get by myself. I want it to tell me things about myself that I can’t bear to know, but tell them to me in a way that makes it possible to know them.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I used to think that joy was a place I wasn’t in but needed to move to.
Then I thought it was a practice that I just needed to work harder at.
But now I think that joy is not tripping over all my feet all the time.
Every time I get up in the morning and I don’t trip? I think that’s joy.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Every woman has the instinct to harm. We spend our whole lives denying it, but it's there. And denying it only damages us. It doesn't actually help anyone - least of all people we think we're protecting from ourselves. Because the instinct to harm? It leaks out in other ways. Darker, stranger ways - more insidious ways - until suddenly we've actually ruined someone's life instead of just punching them in the face. Don't you think they would have preferred a fist in the face, given the choice to choose?”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and fine a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, when I'm all alone that's how I feel too. And even if nobody says those words out loud, right then, we will be feeling the same feelings so strongly that we will forget that we aren't of one body, one mind, one tenuous heart. And if it isn't my play, then I will still be part of that collective witnessing organism, still be a single cell within a warm and gazing animal. It's the sort of feeling that becomes a constant longing. It's the sort of longing upon which you build an entire life.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Nobody is ever gonna be as happy as you are about the good things that happen, but everybody is gonna show up to watch when the shit goes down.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and find a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, when I’m all alone that’s how I feel too.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I started to read all the good things being said about me online, and I felt that they must be true, and I was dazzled by how talented I had been this whole time.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Oh, uh, sure.” I get out of the car and then feel like I have to tell her: “This—this is a handicapped spot, by the way?” Caroline gives me her best deadpan. “I mean, I’m handicapped by sexism, frankly.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Nobody had told me what to do if this happened. Nobody had told me that this could happen. Nobody had told me what comes next.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“There's always a moment with straight girls in which I wonder if they think I'm checking them out. And then, especially if I wasn't, I start acting weird, because I'm trying to make it clear that I'm not, but the more you try to act as if you aren't doing something, the more you seem like you are.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“And if a soul is what that costs, I don't think that's so much, really, because what's a soul ever done for me?”
― Jen Silverman, Witch

“When I came in, she was sitting at the bar, squeezing a crescent of lime through the neck of her Negra Modelo. She didn't see me at first, and the pure concentration that she was devoting to the task moved me in some way. I wanted to become a person who would put lime in my beer like that--like a commitment to the future, like every detail mattered when done correctly.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I think about Hélène: the night before we opened, when she smudged the theatre with Palo Santo and prayed for our success. How maybe her prayer had been only that we carry out our work, not that we were elevated for how we did it. Although that's nice, if it comes. It's just beyond the realm of prayer. Something even more tenuous than a wish. Nothing to stake a life on if you then intend to live the rest of that life.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I had assumed that someday I might win something and it would be nice.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“You know, I used to appear as a woman much more often, back in the day. First I tried being very beautiful, and then I tried being much older, kind of weathered. And then I just stopped altogether and I started being a man.”
― Jen Silverman, Witch

“I want this play to be a success, and to give me two hours of my life that are transcendent, that make being here (in this row, in this theatre, in this body) worthwhile. If”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I’m rich. I’m so rich now. I was in Beverly Hills yesterday for this dumb meeting and I saw this five-thousand-dollar handbag. In a window? And I thought: I could buy that. Like…I could have walked in there and bought it. And I didn’t want it—it was actually a really ugly handbag—but it took me a while to know that, because, when you know you can buy something? That is the largest piece of information in your mind about that thing.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Well, there is something about young men. A certain...luminosity, if you know what I mean. A surge of purpose. A young man is a creature with a whole future ahead of him, and things might be hard for him at some point, but generally he will succeed, and the hard things will only be the things he had to master on his way to success. So when you look at a young man, who is working very hard at something, who is making you an offer -- you feel good inside, subconsciously I mean, you feel like you are participating in a story about possibility and a bright future. You feel like maybe those things could apply to you too. Do you know what I mean?”
― Jen Silverman, Witch

“Ours is not a family of emotion expressed outwardly. It is a family of sharp observations that you keep to yourself.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“If you're wondering what it feels like to want two completely opposite things to the same degree, at the same time, for entirely different reasons - it feels insane. But then again, maybe it's hard to be alive on this planet and not know how that feels.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“In the end, we are all entirely summed up by our single most public failure, and not by any of the nuanced, beautiful, difficult things we accomplished before or after.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves