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Personally I don't spend much time thinking about being funny. For me it's always been just a way to get by, a way to be likable yet to remain removed. When I speak up, it's not because I have any particular answers rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.

Wendy Wasserstein

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Wendy Wasserstein
Age: 55 †
Born: 1950
Born: October 18
Died: 2006
Died: January 30
Dramaturge
Playwright
Screenwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Much
Particular
Puncture
Way
Answers
Likable
Always
Rather
Removed
Time
Funny
Personally
Thinking
Desire
Remain
Speak
Spend
Certain
Seem
Seems
Humor
Pretentiousness

More quotes by Wendy Wasserstein

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I don't much like to think that being a bachelor girl limits how you see the world. On the other hand, I know it certainly limits how the world sees you.
Wendy Wasserstein
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Sloth is the fastest-growing lifestyle movement in the world, and that's because it is completely doable. If you embrace sloth, it's the last thing you'll ever have to do again.
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I thought I would write something that would make some people uncomfortable. . . . What intrigued me, I think, was the idea of women of my own generation who were successful, intelligent, coming to power and suddenly in the public arena. I started to think about what they are allowed and what they are not allowed.
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The marriages come and go but your friendships stay, which is the opposite of what it used to be, so that there will be people in our lives for 30 years and often it is not your husband, it's your women friends, male friends with whom you come of age.
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The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.
Wendy Wasserstein
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The struggle to be considered a grown-up begins, I believe, shortly after birth.
Wendy Wasserstein
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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.
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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.
Wendy Wasserstein
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Every year I resolve to be a little less the me I know and leave a little room for the me I could be. Every year I make a note not to feel left behind by my friends and family who have managed to change far more than I.
Wendy Wasserstein
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A diet counselor once told me that all overweight people are angry with their mothers and channel their frustrations into overeating. So I guess that means all thin people are happy, calm, and have resolved their Oedipal entanglements.
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The signature of a truly enviable woman is the tenacity and continuity of her women friends.
Wendy Wasserstein
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The arts reflect profoundly the most democratic credo, the belief in an individual vision or voice . . . The arts' belief in potential gives each of us -- both audience and creator -- pride in our society's ability to nurture individuals.
Wendy Wasserstein
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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
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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.
Wendy Wasserstein
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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.
Wendy Wasserstein
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being funny is a way of being liked and a way of dealing with sadness.
Wendy Wasserstein
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I really worked at becoming more assertive, and now none of my friends talk to me.
Wendy Wasserstein
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I'm perpetually curious as to what happened to all those supposed prodigies who were singled out while I and my coterie of far more interesting malcontents passed on.
Wendy Wasserstein
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Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.
Wendy Wasserstein
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Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.
Wendy Wasserstein