Spalding Gray Quotes

Radio allowed me to be a creator, and TV stole that creation from me by literalizing - and to some extent limiting - my vision.

I say that I can't make anything up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to tell it because telling you're always in control, you're like God.

I see [my pen] as an extension of my musculature. It's like being a painter. It's the closest I can get to my breath.

What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place.

I was raised as an upper-class WASP in New England, and there was this old tradition there that everyone would simply be guided into the right way after Ivy League college and onward and upward. And it rejected me, I rejected it, and I ended up as a kind of refugee, really.

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.

And in this role (the Stage Manager) I could speak from my heart, you know! ... provided I can memorize the lines.

All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.

I refer to jet lag as 'jet-psychosis - there's an old saying that the spirit cannot move faster than a camel.

How theraputic it is to surrond yourself with people stranger than yourself.

I'm basically a fearful person. I'm a phobic person.

I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to.

To be famous is to be stuck in an inflexible place. But at least it is to be stuck with money.

When people used to ask me why I got involved with Hollywood films, I would say jokingly that it was for the health insurance.

The finished product is a result of a series of organic, creative mistakes
perception itself becoming the editor of the final report.

Real life has always let me down. That's why I do the monologues. I have always said I would rather tell a life than live a life. But I have to live a life in order to tell one.

I may look like an American WASPy doctor or lawyer, but I feel just like Woody Allen. Don't cast me for my looks - I have a very ironic, existential, crazy Jew in me.

I'm kind of this control freak that likes to create his own hells before the real one can get to him

I hadn't had a perfect moment yet. And it's very important for me to have perfect moments in exotic countries like that ... it kind of lets you know when it's time to go home ...

One of the ways to reincarnate is to tell your story.

And just as I was climbing into that first-class seat, and wrapping myself in a blanket, just as I was adjusting my pillow behind my head, and having a sip of that champagne, and just as I was bringing down and adjusting my Thai purple sleep mask, I had an inkling. I had a flash. I suddenly thought I knew what it was that had killed Marilyn Monroe.

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.