Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.
Wendy WassersteinRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of balancing humor with serious personal issues in life.
Wendy Wasserstein's quote reflects on the delicate interplay between humor and the serious aspects of our identities, such as self-loathing and the quest for love. It suggests that even in times when intimacy feels impossible or unnecessary, finding joy and humor can help navigate complex emotional landscapes, thus highlighting the importance of balance in life.
In practice
During a speech about mental health, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of laughter in overcoming serious issues.
Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.
I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation. If I can just hold out till I'm thirty, I'll be incredible.
No matter how successful I become as a playwright, my mother would be thrilled to hear me tell her that I'd just lost twenty pounds, gotten married and become a lawyer.
No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There's nothing wrong with being alone.
A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.
Like looking through a telescope into the Milky Way and wondering if we're alone in the universe, it made me realize with the glaring clarity of desert light how scarce and delicate life is, how insignificant we are compared with the forces of nature and the dimensions of space.
When you step further into the story you came to live, not only does the mythic territory open, but the deep self moves and the world of imagination and meaning comes towards you.
To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends -- they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant.
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.
Vanity destroys your work. That's the one thing you have to let go of as an actor. I don't care how sexy or beautiful any woman is. At the end of the day, she has to take her makeup off. At the end of the day, she's more than just pretty.
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