Setayesh Yavari

“DON. I mean ... what do you want, Rosalind? -
ROSALIND. So many things: to wake up without feeling the
weight of the day pressing down, to fall asleep more easily, without
wondering what it is that's keeping me awake, to eat more beets
and also turnips, to be kissed, to feel important, to learn how to be
okay being with other people, and also how to be alone. To be a
child again, held up and admired, the world full of endless future.
To be kissed.To feel every day what it would be to stand at the
summit of a mountain in Wales, or Switzerland, or America, looking
out over the world on a late afternoon with this man sitting across
from me. Or to feel it once.”
― Anna Ziegler

“DON. You know, I have this theory ... I think the things we
want but can't have are probably the things that define us ...
And I've spent more time than I'd like to admit coming to this
pretty simple conclusion so I hope you don't think it's completely
ridiculous. But ... I guess I'm talking about ... I don't know ...
yearning?”
― Anna Ziegler

“MAURICE. (Matter-of-factly.) It's the loneliest pursuit in the
world. Science. Because there either are answers or there aren't.
There either is a landscape that stretches before you or there isn't.
And when there isn't, when you're left in the darkness of an empty
city at night, you have only yourself.”
― Anna Ziegler

“RAY. But she never went to Leeds. Rosalind was thirty-seven when
she died. It was a particularly cold April that year; there was frost on
the trees in London; the Alps stayed snow-covered well into June.
MAURICE. No, no, no ... I won't have it.
RAY. Eulogies about her focused on her single-minded devotion
to work, the progress she made in her work, the lasting contributions
she made through her work.
MAURICE. (To Ray.) Stop that! I said: stop that right now.
RAY. I can't. It's what happened.
DON. It's the tricky thing about time, and memory. I tell my grandchildren: whole worlds of things we wish had happened are
as real in our heads as what actually did occur.
MAURICE. Stop that right now. We start over. At the beginning.This instant.
JAMES. You've got to be kidding me, Wilkins. I mean, you won.
We won. Your name on the Nobel Prize. Remember that part? For
god's sakes: this was the finest moment in your life.
MAURICE. No. It wasn't. (He turns to Rosalind.) We start over.
Just us this time. (Everyone else exits.) Please ... You see, I need ...
ROSALIND. (Gently.) What is it you need, Maurice?
MAURICE. There's something I need to tell you ... It's important.
ROSALIND. Then tell me. (Beat.)
MAURICE. I saw you. The day you went to see The Winters Tale at the Phoenix.
ROSALIND. This is what you needed to tell me?”
― Anna Ziegler